Another record year for Latymerians at UK Linguistics Olympiad

1 March 2023

Congratulations to the seven students from Latymer who competed in this year’s UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) at Advanced Level. For the first time all of our candidates have won a bronze award or higher with one student, Amitai (Y13), even achieving a high gold!

This very high Gold award qualifies them, for the second year running, for Round 2 and potential selection for the national squad to represent the UK in the international Linguistics Olympiad. It has been an incredible start to the year for Tai who received an offer last month from Oxford to read Maths and Philosophy.

Piyush (Y12) was just 1.1% off the threshold for Gold and was awarded a high Silver award. Fred, Didi, Esme and Sanna in Y13 achieved Bronze and Stella in Y12 was 0.8% off a Silver, earning a High Bronze.

UKLO had a record entry of 1686 candidates for the Advanced Level competition this year, awarding Gold to the top 5%, Silver to the top 10% and Bronze to the top 20%. The UKLO is a fun but challenging competition in which students compete to solve problems based on some of the world’s 7,000 languages. Participants use data from a given language to crack codes and solve puzzles. It requires analytical skills and critical thinking. Linguistic Olympiads started in Moscow in the 1950s but there are now over 40 national competitions taking place every year leading up to the International competition.

“I’m absolutely thrilled that for the first time ever, every one of our students who entered has been awarded a Bronze or higher,” said Mrs Collier who coordinated Latymer’s entry. “It’s been another record-breaking year for Latymer and an incredible set of results. Well done to them all.”