A team of learners from Wesbank no.1 Primary School came first in the Western Cape and second nationally in an annual astronomy competition for Grade 7 learners, called AstroQuiz.
Hanlie Zwaan, science teacher at the school, says this is a great achievement considering the school only recently launched their science centre. TygerBurger reported on the opening of the schools’ science centre in July.
The AstroQuiz is coordinated by the Science Education Division of the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (Saasta); a business unit of the National Research Foundation (NRF).
The competition has been running since 2005.
There are four rounds with the first round being paper based and done at school. The first round had a total of 15 705 learners from 790 schools participating nationally.
Learners can participate individually in the first round and thereafter, from round two, in teams of four each.
Rounds two to four took place online. NRF-Saasta has developed an online quiz, which is hosted on the SA Astronomy Observatory App, to enable learners to take the quiz on a smart phone.
A total of 595 teams (2 380 learners), from all nine provinces, participated in round two (educational district level) online. In round three, the provincial round, 117 teams (468 learners) participated.
The winning teams of each province (nine teams, 36 learners) participated in the final round that took place on 15 September.
The winning team is from Mariadze Primary School (Limpopo), followed by Team Moons5 from Wesbank No.1 Primary School and Team Einsteins from Laerskool Proteapark (North West) in third place.
