For 2015 we’re supporting a national competition where your students could win vouchers totalling up to £5,000! We’ll let them express it in their own words though:
As an online competition that challenges participants to engage in research during a designated time frame, the National Academic Challenge (NAC) is an upcoming 3-phase event designed to help prepare students in Key Stage 3 and above for all the challenges of today’s job market.
Some aspects that make the NAC a unique educational event:
- Teams can participate anywhere, together at their school or individually from their own homes.
- The event develops an active pursuit of information to seek answers to the complex problems presented while other competitions test memory based information.
- The NAC environment encourages the application of new learning methods, teamwork and increases the use of new technologies in the classroom.
- Promotes interaction with the entire school community including teachers, students, parents and school staff.
The competition will take place over two weekends and it will be up to students to manage their time for each phase.
The first phase consists of four hands-on tasks for each team to complete. While these tasks are not scored or mandatory, they are used as the first tie-breaking factor to determine the winner of the competition. Teams will have 5 days to complete as many tasks as they can.
The second phase is a qualifying round and consists of 10 questions from the following topics: History, Environment, Music, Trivia, News, Languages, Art, Technology, Sports, Logical Reasoning and a surprise topic. Each question is worth a number of points based on the difficulty of the question and teams will have 36 hours to complete as many questions as they can. Teams that score higher than the national average performance will qualify for the third and final phase, which consists of a timed Puzzle in an unrevealed format.
The team that has the highest combined score from the second and third phase will be the winner. They will receive £5,000 to be evenly divided between members and an additional £1,000 for their teacher.
The NAC is an extraordinary opportunity for students to learn how to think outside the box, work in teams, manage conflicts, critically analyze complex problems and assume leadership in the quest for knowledge as they interact with students from around the country.
The registration deadline for teachers and their student teams is 13th of March.
For more information and registration, visit the official website at: www.nachallenge.com
