It's Academic

On Thursday 19 October Mordialloc College ran the annual ‘It's Academic’ competition. For this highly anticipated event, we invite local primary schools to assemble a team of 4 Year Five students who come to Mordialloc College and represent their primary school. This year we had our biggest competition yet, with six primary schools getting involved. The primary schools included last year’s champions Chelsea Heights PS, Chelsea PS, Edithvale PS, Aspendale Gardens PS, Mordialloc Beach PS and Aspendale PS. Our Year 7 students made up the audience which created a sense of excitement as they were able to support the primary school they attended and encourage the Grade 5’s along the way.

The competition consists of to preliminary round where each school is asked a set of 8 questions, the first round being multiple choice and the second being the more traditional questioning. After the preliminary rounds we establish a top 4 based in the results, with 3rd playing 4th for overall 3rd place & 1st playing 2nd for the championship.

This year proved to be an extremely competitive event, with all teams impressing all those in attendance by scoring highly in the first round, the second round the questions became more difficult, however each team demonstrated a high level of knowledge. At the end of the preliminary round we had a top 3 in Aspendale, Mordialloc Beach & Edithvale – however the remaining 3 schools were all tied on 9 points. We conducted a knockout round to separate these schools which was taken out by Chelsea Heights PS. 

In the playoff for 3rd place, Edithvale was able to secure the win over Chelsea Heights – with only 2 points in it!

Finally, in the championship playoff, Aspendale was up against Mordialloc Beach – they each had a Who Am I? question worth up to 5 marks, with both teams securing 3 points for. It was down to the last set of questions, Mordialloc Beach was first up and they were able to answer 3 out of 6 questions correct. It was then all in the hands of Aspendale, with their team members rising to challenge and answering the first 4 questions of their set correctly taking out the win and becoming the 2023 Mordialloc College ‘Its Academic’ Champions.

In the coming weeks, myself and Michelle Roberts will attend a whole school assembly at Aspendale Primary School to present to the winning team, the perpetual Its Academic trophy.

It was a great event as always and I would like to extend my congratulations to all the primary schools who were represented during the competition, and well done to Aspendale who will no doubt be preparing to come back next year to defend their title.

Brendan McFarland

Director of Middle School