Grade boundaries released for this year’s Olympiad competition

The Royal Society of Chemistry has released the grade boundaries for round 1 of the UK Chemistry Olympiad. Participants needed to score 12–21 marks for the Bronze award, 22–36 marks for the Silver award and 37 or more for the Gold award. Students’ scores are available from their teachers and certificates will be distributed in pdf form in March.

A graph showing the grade boundaries for the UK Chemistry Olympiad 2020

The competition took place in schools across the country from 20–30 January. 9182 students from 782 UK schools took part, with 6238 (68%) of them achieving one of the three awards. 2020 was a record-breaking year for the competition, with participant numbers up 23% on last year.

Up to thirty students will now be selected to go on to the second round, a residential weekend hosted by the University of Cambridge involving a range of lessons and demonstrations, as well as some theoretical and practical tests. Four of these students will then be chosen to represent the UK later this year at the 52nd International Chemistry Olympiad, hosted in Istanbul, from 6–15 July.

Run annually, the UK Chemistry Olympiad is the leading chemistry competition for students in secondary education across Britain, encouraging young chemists to develop their skills and test their knowledge in new situations. It consists of three stages: a two-hour written test (round 1), residential weekend (round 2) and culminates in the top students participating in the prestigious International Olympiad competition.