Academic Competitions

We encourage a healthy competitive spirit here at Blackheath High School, through our own House competitions, collaborating and competing with other schools within the GDST, and taking part in a number of local and national competitions. All of these give the students opportunities to explore their skills in specialist areas, stretch and challenge themselves, and test out their intellect and creativity.  

The whole school takes part in the UK Mathematics Trust Challenge, from the Junior School all the way up to those taking Maths for A-level. Junior School pupils additionally compete in the SUMDOG Greenwich Maths Challenge, and the Maths in Motion national challenge. English is another subject where we display our competitive nature, with both Junior School and Senior School students entering an array of poetry, debate, and essay-writing competitions, provided - amongst others - by Oxford, Cambridge, and Lancaster universities.  

We successfully compete in a wide range of fields, including recent regional wins at the Anthea Bell Young Translators competition; regularly representing the school in the finals of the prestigious GDST Chrystall Carter Prize, in which Tallulah (Year 11) most recently took first prize in the semi-final for Public Speaking for a speech arguing that ‘Social Media is Undoing Our Society’; and our GCSE Mandarin linguists winning the brilliant Challenge of China competition, ran by Business Language Champions (BLC).

The biggest opportunity that arises from academic competitions is that our students meet and network with other schools, judges, professors, and top-of-field professionals in their key areas of interest. These connections and relationships, along with the teamwork, confidence, and ingenuity that academic competitions inspire, are sure to benefit our students later in life – both during university applications and interviews, and in the wider world of work.