ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS
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ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS
As well as our outstanding headline results in public examinations in the summer of 2025, Ardingly students across the senior school have performed extremely well in national and international academic competitions in the academic year 2025/26.
Maths Olympiads
Senior Maths Challenge and Maths Olympiad:
A record 30 Ardingly students were awarded Gold in the UK Senior Maths Challenge this year. This is the highest number of students in recent memory (and definitely for at least the last 12 years, which is when our records began). Five of these students therefore qualified for the British Maths Olympiad. Particular congratulations are due to Ivan Osipov, who scored full marks in the Senior Maths Challenge (which we think is another College record.)
Junior Maths Challenge and Maths Olympiad:
We are delighted to report that three of our Lower School students qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad this year. This is a really significant achievement, as fewer than 0.5% of the 250,000 pupils who take part each year qualify for the Junior Maths Olympiad. Huge congratulations to Raife Bird in Year 7 who, not only qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad, but managed to achieve Gold in both the Junior and in the Senior Maths Challenge – a remarkable achievement for a student aged 11.
The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, 2026
Four Ardingly linguists achieved significant success in the prestigious Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators 2026, a national competition organised annually by The Queen’s College, Oxford, which attracts over 25,000 entries every year. Esther Gimeno in our Lower Sixth was named Area Winner for the South East region for her Spanish-to -English translation (Level 2) and Suzie Chadburn in Remove (Year 10) was highly commended for her translation from German to English. A further two Lower Sixth students, Joshua Morel and Daria Hess, both won commendations for their translations from French and Russian respectively into English. Based on last year’s overall statistics this achievement places all four of them in the top 0.01% of competitors.
Simon Powell Poetry Competition Winner, 2025
Ariel Zhang in our Lower Sixth was one of just 10 national winners, out of thousands of entries nationwide,in the prestigious Simon Powell Poetry Competition 2025. Part of her prize was to read her winning poem at the Poetry Live! Conference In Brighton, as well as participating in a winners’ workshop with Forward Prize-winning poet Daljit Nagra. Ariel’s award-winning poem was entitled ‘Between the Cracks’ and was about her home town of Shanghai.
Bebras Competition
200 of our Computer Scientists entered the Bebras Competition this year, and an impressive 35 students achieved the coveted Bebras Gold Certificate, placing them in the top 10% nationally. Particular congratulations to Craig Lau in Remove, who scored in the top 0.01% in the world, out of c. 4 million students globally who participate in this challenging test of computational thinking and problem-solving through logic based puzzles.
Science Olympiads
Biology
Ardingly students achieved outstanding results at the British Biology Olympiads, winning a grand total of 12 medals and certificates. These included three Gold Medals, four Silvers, two Bronze, with one student achieving being highly commended and two being commended. The Gold Medallists were Kerem Tohma, Daniel Jessep and Rocy Chen. Even more impressively, all three gold medallists qualified for the International Olympiads selection round.
Chemistry
In the British Chemistry Olympiad, Kerem Tohma and Thomas Lin were both awarded Gold medals, with Ardingly students also achieving three Silvers and seven Bronze medals. Notably, one Fifth Form pupil achieved a Silver award, a particularly commendable accomplishment given the advanced level of the competition. Nationally, only around 8% of the 17,241 entrants achieved Gold, highlighting the significance of these top awards. Our Chemists also performed strongly in the National Scientific Thinking Challenge run by the University of Warwick, gaining nine Gold, nine Silver and eight Bronze certificates. This breadth of achievement reflects both enthusiasm for Chemistry beyond the classroom and a willingness to engage with challenging problem-solving at a high level
Physics
In the British Physics Olympiad, five out of the 18 Ardingly students who entered the new Round 0 qualified for Round 1, which puts them in the top 20% of the 9,500 students who took part. In the subsequent Round 1 our students were awarded one Gold, one Silver and three Bronze certificates. In the British Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad Round 1 our students were awarded a Top Gold and a Bronze certificate. Thomas Lin was the Top Gold pupil and he went on to enter the Astro Round 2 competition, which was an incredible achievement. In the Senior Physics Challenge, which is for Lower Sixth pupils, Ardingly students were awarded four Silvers, eight Bronzes and one Commendation. One Fifth form pupil entered the Intermediate Physics Challenge and was awarded a Gold certificate.