This week we returned to school after a restful Christmas break, and we are already thrilled to announce impressive achievements by some of our older students.

Last November several of our most skilled and enthusiastic VI Form physicists entered Round 1 of the British Physics Olympiad. Run by the Physics department at Oxford University, the BPhO is the most popular and difficult Physics competition at A-level. Its aim is to promote the study of Physics and recognise excellence in young scientists.

This year brought fantastic success for our pupils, with many Bronze Awards and a Silver Award for Carmen A. We are particularly proud of Zhikun L, one of our Year 13 physicists, who has achieved a Top Gold Award, the highest possible distinction in this competition. The Top Gold is only granted to 7.1% of the candidates in the world and is an extraordinary accomplishment. Zhikun was one of just 170 out of 4500 young physicists that obtained such a brilliant result.

This has been a particularly exciting week for Zhikun, as he also received an offer to study Mathematics at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford!

Congratulations to all our physicists who took part in the Olympiad. Year 12s and 11s will soon enter similar challenges at the end of January and the Physics department is confident there will be many more awards on the way.

This week also saw two recent Old Runnymedians return to give a talk to VI Formers about the university application process and their experience of life and learning in the UK so far. Angelica Ors (last year’s Head Girl) and Elena Rico, are, respectively, studying Chemistry at Imperial College London and Psychology at St Andrews, and it was great to hear their thoughts on choosing courses. They are both loving every minute of their time at university in Britain!