The 2025 Chemistry Olympiad Round one results

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has released the Round one grade boundaries for this year’s UK Chemistry Olympiad (UKChO), with 65% of participants achieving bronze, silver or gold awards.

On Thursday 23 January 2025, 16,216 students from 1502 schools sat the exam paper – even more than the 14,915 students from 1025 schools in 2024. 10,603 participants will receive a bronze, silver or gold award based on their scores. To achieve a bronze award, students had to score 9–15 marks out of a possible 83. For silver, they had to get 16–28 marks. And for gold, more than 29 marks. This year, 32.1% of participants achieved a bronze award, 25.2% a silver and 8.2% a gold. Students can request their scores from their teachers. The RSC Education team will send pdf certificates to participants’ teachers in April.

The Round one paper, set by the UKChO working group, included questions on radioactive decay, epoxides, the iodination of ketones, carbon nanotubes and Raman spectroscopy. A teacher from Redland Green School said, ‘The Round one paper makes A-level question papers seem easy in comparison, which gives students confidence that they can attempt any A-level chemistry question and do very well.’ Known for its challenging, but intriguing questions, the Olympiad didn’t disappoint this year with one question starting ‘While Charlie XCX’s Brat summer of 2024 may be over, this summer will be Paddington’s BrAt Bear Summer. Much like Brat summer, the compound BrAt doesn’t last forever. This is due to the radioactive decay of astatine.’ Paddington Bear is the UKChO team’s mascot, travelling to the International Chemistry Olympiad’s (IChO), such as last year’s final in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

What’s next for this year’s Olympiad?

The RSC has invited 30 of the highest-achieving participants to Round two, which takes place on 10–13 April 2025 at the University of Nottingham. Members of the Olympiad working group will run theoretical and practical sessions, using the IChO’s preparatory problems, over the few days to test the students’ chemistry knowledge. The working group will then select four students to represent the UK at the IChO, which will be held in the United Arab Emirates from 5–14 July 2025.

Thank you to every teacher who registered and supported their students, and to all those who took part in Round one of this year’s competition.