As briefly reported in the previous Edit, we were delighted to win the recent National Reading Championship Quiz, organised by the National Literacy Trust. Emanuel School has been participating in book related quizzes since around 2010, but this is the first time we have won a big national prize, so are incredibly proud of our fantastic team.

We qualified for the final by winning one of the 22 national heats, with only the winning team from each heat securing a place in the prestigious final. Schools came from all over the UK and as far away as Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This book related competition began during Covid, and we have participated in all the four years it has been running. For the first two years we came second in our heat, narrowly missing out on a spot in the national final, which we reached for the first-time last year.

In that final we finished in an agonising second place, narrowing losing to Colfe’s School in an amazing competition where the contestants were treated like VIPs. Coming so close to winning spurred us on to try and get back to the national final and go one place better. After hearing Colfe’s had been knocked out in their qualifying heat, I believed we were in with a fighting chance, with Tosca the only member of last year’s team returning with three new recruits. However, these new three players were very experienced and regular participants in our many internal quiz events.

Winning the heat was a very close shave and we did so by edging a sudden death play-off question in which Tom was the only contestant to recognise the first line of the classic A Very Hungry Caterpillar. Having reached the final, the team took their training and practicing very seriously. When the big day arrived, we were a combination of confident (and laid back). The key to success in this competition is reading and our team are four ‘reading machines’!

The questions (eight rounds of ten) seemed much harder than last year, and we won the competition by scoring 47 out of 80, after a play-off for second and third. The first three questions in every round were ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ choices, followed by two ‘True’ or ‘False’ then five randomly themed questions. Many were incredibly hard, even with questions where I had read the book, I often still got the answers wrong. Mr Maskell, our reserve Mishka, and I also did the test and scored fifty, which shows how fiendishly difficult it was.

Our team of Tosca (captain Y9), Tom (Y9), Beatrice (Y8), Cecilia (Y7) and Mishka (reserve, Y8) were an absolute credit to the school. Winning national prizes, in any event, does not happen very often and our team showed that being well read is crucial to success. In answering the questions Mr Maskell and I noticed that between 65% and 70% had some connection to our recently completed 100 Book Challenge, which has been a major lower school activity over this school year. It should come as no surprise that Beatrice, Cecilia, and Mishka are amongst the pupils to be presented with the Gold Award.

Our thanks to the National Reading Trust for organising such a super event and the highly entertaining quiz master Mr Dilly. The team really appreciated the free books they received and enjoyed the author talk, particularly having the chance to hear Tom Palmer who was on our TSBA Eight Book Challenge with Arctic Star.

Mr Jones, Senior Librarian