The Maatangi Whenua Quiz is the ultimate prize in School Geography. It is a 10 round, 3 hour long, wide ranging test of a Year 11 Geography student’s Geographic Knowledge. In 2021, Shirley Boys’ High School was crowned Canterbury Maatangi Whenua Champion against 18 other teams competing from all over Canterbury, from Burnside to Rolleston. The Champion team was Jacob Knoef, Jack Druery and Adam Marriott - congratulations to these three boys.

There was a wide variety of tasks requiring current knowledge of events and people around the world but also a great memory of the usual geographic building blocks of country knowledge, flag expertise and capital city recall. Students also complete a range of different tasks like using Play-Doh to create natural features, topographic map skills and using YouTube geography IT clip tasks. SBHS has been consistently successful in this competition. This year’s team broke the ‘bridesmaid’s tag’ gained over previous years and it was the first victory for the school since back to back wins in 2009 and 2010. The 2021 SBHS team finished with a total score of 155 (out of possible 178), beating Christchurch Boys’ High School on 151 and St Andrews on 147.