On Wednesday 18 May, our school hosted a Gifted and Talented conference for students from schools across Bath as well as other GDST schools. The day consisted of four lectures on the topics of astrophysics, time travel, marine conservation and chemistry.

Ophelia in Year 9 has written a great roundup of what happened during the day, and the talks that were available to the students.

"Colin Stuart, the author of ‘How we’ll live on Mars’ spoke about his book and told us his thoughts on life on Mars. We learnt that he has worked alongside Tim Peake. We were also able to purchase a signed copy of his book.

The second lecturer was Olivia Coombes, a philosopher with a special interest in time travel. Olivia talked about the ‘grandfather paradox’ of time travel prompting many questions. Olivia also spoke about the possibility of going back in time and changing the past. The lecture was definitely thought provoking.

As a huge fan of David Attenborough, I was most interested to hear about the work of David Jones in his lecture ‘Is it too late to save our oceans?’ David Jones is an underwater cameraman who has worked with David Attenborough. He has focused on highlighting the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. David explained that we only have one ocean as all of earth’s water is interconnected. David is also involved in ‘Just One ocean’ which is a company that works to bring attention to the other problems of over fishing and habitat destruction.

Our last lecture we had was from Dr Zoe Schnepp, from the University of Birmingham’s School of Chemistry. Her research focuses on ways where nature can be copied for example: seaweed produces polymers which can be used to make nanowire of superconductors. The lecture also involved a fun experiment which we could all get involved with.

This was a fantastic day of listening to lectures from experts who are passionate about such diverse topics outside of our usual lessons and opened up new ideas about our planet."

Beechen Cliff were invited to attend, and we were delighted to receive feedback from one of the Year 10 parents.

"He came back very motivated and inspired by all of the talks! So thank you for inviting him. It really does make my job easier as a parent when he's getting so engaged and motivated at school regarding his learning and future aspirations!"