An audience of teachers and parents enjoyed an evening of academic excellence on Wednesday 31 January when six shortlisted Lower Sixth boys delivered their Bedford School Independent Project (BSIP) presentations in the Memorial Hall on their chosen areas of personal and academic interest.
The BSIP, which is now in its ninth year at Bedford School, is a body of work encompassing various forms of academic extension on an area of personal interest to the boys. All Lower Sixth A-Level boys are required to produce a BSIP and selected boys are then invited to present their project.
This year, the adjudicators were particularly impressed by the presenting boys’ extensive knowledge and the confidence with which they delivered their talks; indeed, the presentations were of such a high standard that they awarded a joint first prize.
Charlie Eggleton was one of those joint winners for his talk ‘What skills does a trauma surgeon need to save lives in austere environments?’. The judges commended his background reading, his passionate delivery and his honest reflection on the BSIP journey.
Charlie told us, “I chose the topic because I am very interested in medicine and was reading books on the topic. My Mum gave me a book called War Doctor by David Nott, who is one of the world’s best trauma surgeons, and I was hugely inspired by all the volunteer work he has done for the Red Cross and UNICEF. Since reading this book, I have done lots of medical-related work experience and I would like to study medicine after Sixth Form.”
Charlie went on to say, “I really enjoyed the evening and seeing everyone else’s presentations – they were all so good.”
Joint winner Edgar Maddocks was chosen for making a highly complex topic accessible and the confident, easy delivery of his presentation ‘How can we predict stock returns using machine learning – with Python examples?’.
Edgar explained, “When I was 13 years old, I took a Computer Science course at UCL, which I really enjoyed. I decided not to take it at GCSE, which I quite regretted. So, during the summer after GCSEs, I learned the whole of the GCSE Python course and started to take on small AI projects. I turned to the Stock Market as a big source of centralised data and thus I came up with this topic to study.”
“I am very pleased to have come joint first. I didn’t think I was going to, but I put a lot of time and research into it and so I am very pleased.”
Kona Dlomu was runner up and was highly commended for his articulate reflections and responses to questioning in his ‘Analysis of the long-term blackouts occurring in South Africa’.
Saif Ajaj impressed with the way he engaged the audience and his enthusiasm for the topic ‘Should the ban on commercial supersonic travel be re-evaluated and removed?’
Eric He spoke on ‘The Transformation of Rome in the Late Antiquity’, astounding all with the breadth of his reading and knowledge.
Adrian Lok was congratulated for the organisation and selection of material from both primary and secondary sources when he explored ‘What contributed to the emergence and escalation of Mao’s cult of personality prior to the Cultural Revolution?’