Fendick Competition 2022
On Friday 25th March 2022 we held the final of the Fendick Competition in the School Hall. We were delighted to welcome back an audience in the Hall, along with an additional audience who watched the event at home, via Zoom.
The Fendick Project takes its name from Canon George Fendick, who was one of the school governors in the 1950’s. He also taught some English lessons at King’s on a voluntary basis until his death in 1962. In this role he made a lasting impression on a whole generation of King’s schoolboys with his scholarly interests and the helpful advice he gave about how to write good essays.
The Fendick competition was inaugurated in the 1960’s by Mr Bruce Mitchell, who was a History teacher at King’s from 1959 until 1966. Mr Mitchell had been taught by Canon Fendick as a Sixth Former here and regarded him as one of his most important academic mentors.
We were delighted to be joined this year by Bruce Mitchell’s son, Mr Andrew Mitchell, a former King’s pupil and King’s parent, as one of our judges. Alongside Andrew on the judging panel, we welcomed Dr Joan Elmslie, a Gloucester GP and King’s parent and Anne Davies, a Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Brasenose College.
This annual research and public speaking event is one of the academic highlights of Sixth Form at King's. Students compete by presenting on their chosen subject, aiming to make their insights and arguments interesting, accessible and relevant to an audience of their peers, parents, staff and governors. This year's five finalists, and their topics, were:
Hannah Hall-Tomkin: Is treating teenage anxiety as effective online as it is in person?
Willoughby Cooke: Has medicine stifled human evolution and if so, what are our options?
Billy Keenan: Graphene: the dawn of a new age?
Nina Jones: Was AIDS portrayed as the ‘scourge of the gays’ in Britain in the 1980s?
Victor Mwashigadi: What is holding Africa back from being economically developed?
The judges were impressed by all of our finalists, the extremely high standard of the competition and the pupils’ confidence, especially Nina talking about such a difficult subject. They also commended Billy for his knowledge and ability to speak without notes, and Victor for his evident passion for his subject.
The judges all agreed it was an incredibly difficult decision but Nina Jones was selected as the winner, with Victor Mwashigadi as the runner up.
