Chemistry Students Continue to Shine at Tavistock College
It has been another hugely successful year for Chemistry students at Tavistock College with Year 13 students once again performing exceptionally well in the prestigious National Chemistry Olympiad. All year 13 students entered and gained top awards, with 3 students achieving a Gold award and 2 students achieving a Silver award. Over 17k students took part in the challenge this year and this puts the Tavistock College year 13s in the top 8.5% (Gold) and top 25.7% (Silver). This is now 3 consecutive years of Tavistock College students achieving outstanding results in this highly competitive challenge. Over a 3 year period, 50% of A-level Chemistry students are returning with Gold awards while all students are consistently gaining a certificated award. Director of STEM Michael Harris said; “We are so proud of their achievements, the Chemistry Olympiad is no mean feat, with students expected to not only compete with the top students both nationally and internationally but also commit to additional study outside of their normal course to prepare”. This further reinforces the outstanding performance of post-16 Chemistry at the College which has seen the course return grades of 50% A*-B and 100% pass rates for 5 years running. A-level Chemistry at Tavistock College continues to grow and shine with the course now regularly ranked among some of the highest performing at both local and national level.
The success has not stopped here this year. For the first time in recent history, the school also entered year 10+11 students into the National Junior Chemistry Challenge. This competition saw 127 schools take part, with 5145 pupils sitting the paper. This is an extremely competitive challenge with schools mainly entering a few handpicked students in years 10+11. However, Tavistock College allowed any student studying triple Science in years 10 or 11 (65) as well as 38 year 10 Double Science students. They performed admirably in what was a very complex and challenging test, achieving 2 Gold awards (Top 15.2%), 9 Silver awards (Top 27%) and 57 Copper Awards (Top 44.2%). All year 11s who entered managed to certificate at Copper or above which is excellent news and very impressive. The year 10s had a harder task having only started the course in September but again performed brilliantly. The school is extremely proud of the effort students have put into these challenges and we look forward to extending them out to both Biology and Physics.
Science is thriving at Tavistock College with Triple Science results regularly finishing in the top 20% of the country and Science overall regularly finishing in the top 40% nationally. Head of Faculty and Chemistry lead Kevin Williams said: “5 years ago, we set ourselves the goal to offer the best possible Science education in the South West. It’s a journey that will ultimately never end but we will always strive to take the next step on. We are extremely proud of all the effort and hard work that both the students and teachers have put in, to ensure we keep making progress towards this goal. The exam results and national competitions are a great external pat on the back for the students, but the real success is built every day in every classroom. We will continue to strive to offer the best Science education we can here at Tavistock College. A massive well done to all the students who took part this year; putting aside the colour of the awards, these tests are designed to be very challenging and any student willing to go above and beyond to challenge themselves should be celebrated and applauded”.
Chemistry Olympiad
