Venus Star's four-student team won the 2022 National Mathematical Olympiad competition, the school's first national title in the event.
The competition draws teams from across South Sudan for a single day of timed problem sets, escalating in difficulty from standard curriculum material to problems most competitors won't have seen in a classroom at all. Venus Star's team, two science stream students, and two from the Technical Track had been preparing since the start of the academic year in a weekly after-school session run by the Science department.
Biology students had a longer day of it, sitting the written paper in the morning before moving into a practical session in the afternoon. The practical component asked students to carry out and record an experiment under exam conditions, a different kind of pressure than a written paper alone, and one that tends to expose gaps a multiple-choice question never would. Every script and mark, as with all exams at Venus Star, passes through the examination secretary's office before results reach a student or a department head.