On Monday the 29th of March, eight Year 9 and eight Year 10 students participated in the 2021 Da Vinci Decathlon at the University of Western Australia.

It was an early start for the students with everyone gathering at 7.30 for the day's event. The Da Vinci Decathlon is an academic competition held annually in different countries and is run in the spirit of an Olympic Decathlon. Students compete in teams of eight across ten disciplines including engineering, maths, code-breaking, art and poetry, science, English, ideation, creative producers and general knowledge.

Once we arrived at UWA it was time to strategise and allocate who would complete each paper. Together with teamwork, collaboration and a lot of writing, both Year 9 and 10 teams managed to achieve Aquinas’ highest results yet with the Year 9s coming 3rd in maths and 2nd in both creative producers and science. The Year 10’s were placed first in maths and came 2nd in science. This was a great improvement from what we were able to achieve at the last event 2 years ago. Overall, it was a great day for all who participated and I can strongly recommend it to those wanting to compete in future years.