Lower Sixth Excel in Essay Prize

The Humanities Faculty would like to extend their congratulations to Bella Heath, Lower Sixth, for winning the inaugural RGS Worcester Humanities Essay Prize with her essay on whether it is possible to make friends with a robot. Judged by the University of Worcester, Bella won the Prize against strong competition from her fellow Lower Sixth students.

Towards the end of the Lent term, fifteen students spent one and a half hours writing up their pre-researched essays on their chosen Humanities subject. The winners in each subject were then sent for a second round of judging by Dr Elspeth King of the University of Worcester.

This week, Dr King and her colleague from Sociology, Dr Jenny Lewin-Jones, came into School to announce the results. Twenty-two Humanities students attended a really interesting talk on studying Humanities at University. They also undertook a couple of taster activities, thinking about multimodal discourses as well as propaganda in the Second World War.

Having already won the Philosophy category of the essay competition, Bella Heath was then announced as the overall winner of the Humanities Prize. Jack Staiano’s essay on migration (which won for Geography) and Bella Gray’s essay on who has been the most transformative UK Prime Minister since 1945 (the Politics winner) proved strong competition, both being awarded joint second place.

Dr King congratulated the students: “Firstly, well done to everyone who entered. You challenged yourself to do something away from your essential school work. You will all have learned much from this activity, not just about your chosen topic but about the process. Essay writing is a craft and in doing this you will have nudged yourself a little further along this learning pathway, whether in research, planning or writing up.” The Heads of Department of the Humanities Faculty absolutely agreed and we really enjoyed reading the essays.

We look forward to watching the Humanities candidates develop their skills further as they start to prepare for their University applications in the second half of this term.

Mrs Jane Harrison, Head of Humanities