News

Maths and Languages Dream Team Wins National Competition

Personal Excellence

A team of pupils from St Aloysius’ College paired outstanding academic ability with excellent team work to win this year's Mathématiques sans Frontières competition, a language and problem solving challenge which tests the best mathematics and modern language pupils from schools throughout Scotland.

Scotland’s Mathématiques sans Frontières (MSF) competition is organised each year by the Academy of Strasbourg in partnership with Heriot-Watt University and North Lanarkshire Council.

Open to all schools in Scotland, the MSF competition calls on pupils to work together to find solutions to a number mathematical problems including some set in French, German, Italian and Spanish which must be answered in one of those languages.

This year 39 schools took part in the competition and of all the teams, a group of 12 hardworking Aloysians came out on top as the best school in Scotland thanks to their first class language and problem solving skills as well as an undeniable team spirit.

Each year the Mathematics and Modern Languages departments of St Aloysius’ College collaborate to enter a team and this year the pupils were also mentored by a visiting student teacher at the College, Tobias Sholz, from the University of Bremen in Germany. 

Mr Sholz, who is training to be a Mathematics and Physics teacher in Germany, was undertaking work experience in both departments at the College and was a huge inspiration to the team of Aloysians as they prepared for the MSF competition.

Congratulating the team on their achievement and on the way they worked together, the College’s Head of Mathematics, Dr Kilgour, said,

“Congratulations to this year’s S5 dream team!  This has to be one of the most enthusiastic and best organised team efforts that I’ve ever seen.  They had tremendous fun battling with the problems, challenging each other’s ideas and inputting to the final version of the solution to each problem.” 

“The students always thoroughly enjoy taking part in this competition and this particular group have been a huge inspiration to their younger peers.  If you are in the new S4 and S5 and love mathematics or languages, I would encourage you to get involved in next year’s competition.”

As members of the winning team, St Aloysius’ College pupils Stephen Considine, Michael Dunn, Alexander Fruh and Emily Kilgour of S5 were invited to attend the Mathématiques sans Frontières prize-giving ceremony at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.

The Aloysians were presented with the winner’s shield by Thomas Chaurin, Educational Cooperation Attaché between France and Scotland for the Institut Français d'Écosse.

Congratulations to the successful team members from all at St Aloysius’ College.

Stephen Considine

Amy Crawford

Jennifer Docherty

Michael Dunn

Alexander Fruh

Paul Graham

Emily Kilgour

Monica McGuigan

Abbie McGuire

Honor McWilliams

Patrick Menlove

Evie Snedden