Students test their problem-solving skills

ST Patrick’s College Ballarat hosted more than one hundred and sixty students on Tuesday for regional Victoria’s only Da Vinci Decathlon.

The event is an academic tournament which is designed to challenge students, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

The students from across the state demonstrated teamwork, problem-solving skills and creativity in teams of eight across 10 disciplines: engineering, mathematics and chess, code breaking, art and poetry, science, English, ideation, creative producers, cartography and legacy.

Head of academic enrichment and extension at St Patrick’s College, Kathryn Fraser, said the competition took students beyond the curriculum to provide enrichment and academic challenges.

“We are the only regional Victorian event this year and there is one being held next term in Melbourne,” she said.

“It is for high ability students to be enriched and challenged, and as creative as possible whilst working as a team.

“Some of the activities that they are doing are found in the school curriculum but there’s other examples like code breaking that aren’t… and the work is hard and challenging.”

St Patrick’s College year 10 student Paddy took part in the competition, and he said teamwork was critical to covering the wide variety of topics.

“We all thought about what were our strengths and we chipped away at the ones we thought we would be good at,” he said.

“At the end, one’s we didn’t know we sort of spread them around to see if we could get some fresh thoughts or new ideas.”