National awards in prestigious Geography competition

Two QE boys have been named as Highly Commended in the prestigious national Young Geographer of the Year competition.

Year 10 pupil Rishi Shah (pictured below) was selected by the Royal Geographical Society in the Key Stage 4 category of the competition, while Sixth-Former Vincent Chung (pictured left) achieved the same accolade in the A-level category. For each category, only three Highly Commended awards were given across the whole country.

Rishi and Vincent were presented with their awards at a ceremony at the RGS in central London, which was followed by a celebration lunch. All the award-winning competition entries were displayed during the event.

Headmaster Neil Enright, who is himself a geographer, said: “My congratulations go to Rishi and Vincent and to their teachers. This is a popular and very well regarded competition, so their achievement really is worthy of note.”

For the 2016 competition, entitled How is Britain changing?, pupils were challenged to explore geographical change at both local and national scales and from different perspectives – including human Geography, built and managed environments, physical features of the landscape, geographical processes driving change and whether Britain’s geopolitical relationships with the EU and other countries might be changing.

The RGS encourages schools to run their own local rounds before entering their top-placed entries in the national competition.

Writing to the School to congratulate Rishi and Vincent, Maryam Sharif-Draper, RGS Project Officer: Schools and HE, said: “This year’s competition was of a very high standard, with over 750 entries submitted to the Society and over 5,000 students taking part at school, so Rishi and Vincent should be particularly pleased with their achievement."