Having qualified for the Global Round last year on a ‘wild card’ as ‘Rookie’ teams, BIST excelled this year beyond our wildest expectations. This is all the more impressive given that we were competing against 45 teams from 15 schools, including the ‘heavyweights’ of Shrewsbury, Patana, ISB, NIST and St Andrews: that’s 135 of the very most able Y7-10 students across the Bangkok international school community.

We entered 3 teams:
1.Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
2.Daisy, Devi and Joonho
3.Maisie, Nathan and Shearee

The competition was divided into 4 events:
1.Collaborative Writing (a persuasive writing task)
2.Scholar’s Challenge (a 120-question, often university-level, multiple-choice exam across 6 specialist subjects)
3.Scholar’s Bowl (a 3-hour team quiz in divergent thinking and specialist knowledge and deduction)
4.Debating (3-rounds, each one hour long)

Our results were as follows…

Collaborative Writing
4th place individual student (out of 135) = Surabhi
Honourable mention team (out of 45) = Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
Scholar’s Challenge
1st Place team (out of 45) = Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
7th Place team (out of 45) = Daisy, Devi and Joonho
Honourable Mention Arts = Joonho
Honourable Mention History = Thomas
Honourable Mention Science = Surabhi and Thomas
Honourable Mention Special Area = Shawn
Scholar’s Bowl
5th Place team (out of 45) = Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
7th Place team (out of 45) = Daisy, Devi and Joonho
Debate
1st Place individual student (out of 135) = Thomas
12th Place individual student (out of 135) = Daisy
4th Place team (out of 45) = Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
6th Place team (out of 45) = Daisy, Devi and Joonho
Honourable Mention team = Maisie, Nathan and Shearee
Overall Individual
1st Place Scholar (out of 135) = Thomas
8th Place Scholar (out of 135) = Surabhi
Honourable Mention Scholar = Daisy
Overall Teams
2nd Place (out of 45) = Shawn, Surabhi and Thomas
9th Place (out of 45) = Daisy, Devi and Joonho

Our two top teams qualified instantly and automatically for the Global Finals in Singapore in June, with our third team qualifying on points too – meaning that all three teams we entered will be going to Singapore.