IFS STUDENT WINS SECOND PLACE IN NATIONAL GEOSCIENCES OLYMPIAD
Luane, Terminale student at the International French School (Singapore), takes second place in the French National Geosciences Olympiad
The national winners of the 16th Geosciences Olympiad, which took place last April, have just been announced (late announcement, due to the COVID context).
Luane, a grade 12 student at the International French School (Singapore), participated in the competition during her grade 11 year, which was organised jointly by the Geological Society of France and the French Ministry of Education.
She is ranked 1st in the whole AEFE network for the 2021 session and won the silver medal (out of 4,400 participants) at the national level of this challenging and demanding competition.
The whole IFS community congratulates Luane for this outstanding achievement!
This Olympiad aims to promote geosciences and their image among young students. Created in 2007, the National Geoscience Olympiad is a high-level national competition involving four disciplines: geology, meteorology, environmental science and astronomy. They are open voluntarily to high school students and are supervised by “SVT” teachers (earth and life sciences teachers).
Luane commented, “I learned about this competition from my SVT teacher in grade 11, who presented it in class. The topics for the Olympiad were interesting, presenting the subject differently, and it was this quality of the Olympiad that encouraged me to participate. To prepare for the tests, I took part in training sessions offered by the school.”
The Geosciences Olympiad pursues various educational objectives: to develop a taste for science among high school students, to encourage the emergence of a scientific culture based on the geosciences, to highlight the multidisciplinary dimension of the geosciences, and to emphasise the close link between the geosciences and the range of careers associated with them.
The competition takes the form of a single four-hour written test, “I had three exercises to complete over a period of four hours. There were about ten documents for each exercise, such as maps, graphs, images, and geological sections. The first exercise was about the formation of the English Channel; the second was about the collapse of the Montmartre basement, and the third was about the seismic risk in Teil. The competition expected the answers in the form of diagrams, a letter, explanations of geological phenomena and advice on how to protect oneself against risks,” explains the winner of the silver medal.
Luane is currently in her final year of high school, taking the international option of the French baccalaureate. She likes earth sciences, geoscience and English literature. But above all, she has a passion for biology and wishes to study biology after graduating.
Participation in various educational Olympiads enables IFS students to develop a love of learning while practising the subjects concerned. In this way, IFS supports students to give them the means to build and reinforce their curiosity, open-mindedness, and critical thinking.
To find out more about high school learning, click here.
To find out what our students choose to study after IFS, click here.