54 students in 18 teams of 3 competed in the Junior and Senior Divisions of the Christchurch Round of the World Scholars Cup.

Burnside High School has had a World Scholars Cup club operating since 2020. This has been able led by Blaithan Altenburg 13SRT assisted by Olivia Wang 11WHGM and Rahilla Shafahi 11WHGM.

Due to the pandemic last year's events were cancelled but this year we were able to compete in the local round at Avonside Girls High School.

The team competed against other schools over two days in Debating, Collaborative Writing and a number of other Academic Challenges. The students were awarded individual medals and team medals across all the disciplines.

We also had four Year 13 students who judged the debating section of the competition.  Amy Coe 13OYL, Franklin Altenburg 13KJJ, Estelle Van Wichen 13OLK and William Wray 13OLK all gave generously of their time to judge this competition.

The full list of trophies and medals will appear in next term's newsletter as it is important that all the achievements get acknowledged. We are waiting for the certificates to arrive.

However the top awards for the Christchurch Round were:

Ist Overall Senior Team

Grady Kenix 12SOSS

Zoey Kenix 10STNZ

James O'Connor 12NPTR

1st Overall Junior Team

Hugo Feng 9SPHC

Taylor Blackbourn 9SPHC

Dominic Ono 9SPHC

1st Overall Senior Individual

Grady Kenix 12SOSS

1st Overall Junior Individual

Ron Livne 9SOSC

Most of our teams qualified for an overseas Global Round. We are waiting to see where and when this will be. The last Global Round we went to was in Sydney in 2019 which was followed up by a Junior team competing in the finals at Yale University.

Blaithan is continuing to run the World Scholars Cup Club and the students are continuing their study and practice. They are an impressive group of students.