The Royal Society of Chemistry organise an annual chemistry based competition, ‘Top of the Bench’ (TOTB) to encourage young talented chemical scientists to consider further education and careers in Chemistry.
On Saturday 3 December, eight secondary school students travelled to the British school of Brussels (BSB) to represent St George’s International School by participating in the Belgium
and Luxembourg section of the TOTB competition.
The competition consisted of individual written tests to assess the student’s chemistry knowledge and a team chemistry practical activity to evaluate their team working and problem solving abilities. The students were split into two teams of four, ‘Gallium’ and ‘Vanadium’, and competed against nine other teams.
After an intense afternoon of competition, team ‘Vanadium’ emerged as the overall winners of the competition with team ‘Gallium’ finishing as joint runner-up, having been in the lead after the written test section of the competition.
Team ‘Vanadium’ were therefore able to retain the Keith Price cup for St George’s International school, following on from the success of the school's ‘Hydrogen’ team in last year’s event. The winning team will now go on to represent Belgium and Luxembourg in the final of the competition, held at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom in April 2017. All eight students proved themselves to be highly able chemists and very much impressed the competition organisers, with a special mention to Emanuele and Franklin who both achieved the highest individual test score in their respective year groups.
St George’s International School is an inclusive, vibrant international community of 720 students aged from 3 years to 18+ years, representing over 50 different nationalities. This
rich diversity provides a unique and exciting learning environment for every child. To prepare our students to be outstanding 21st century global citizens, the school nurtures strong
values in its students, based on mutual understanding and respect.
