Bullocky Point ToM Team take on Australia Pacific Final

The Bullocky Point combined Darwin Middle and Darwin High School Tournament of Minds (ToM) team have returned from the Australian Pacific Finals held in Adelaide last weekend.

ToM is a problem solving program for teams of students from both primary and secondary years. They are required to solve demanding, open-ended challenges in Science and Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Social Sciences and Language and Literature.

By Darwin Middle School teacher, Tegan Burness

The competition went really well and while our DMS/DHS combined team didn't come away with a medal I’m told that they were in the top 4. They are really proud of their efforts and with the end result. Their challenge performance was a competition standout, which received amazing feedback from the judges.

For a Darwin team to travel to a National Competition and be competitive against the other states and territories is something to be super proud of. The NSW team they competed against had competed with 400 other teams to get to the Australian Pacific Finals where our DMS/ DHS team only had the opportunity to compete against two other teams. With such a small competition up here, I am so proud that we have students who go down south and are real contenders for the prize!

We had another Darwin Middle team in the Social Sciences category who took out Honours (runners-up) which is another fantastic result.

There are lots of Year 9's who are keen to participate in ToMs again next year so I think we will see a few more DMS/DHS combined teams in 2018. If there are any teachers who would like to get involved next year and facilitate one of the teams, that would be great too!