LAHORE: The pool rounds of the 14th Dawn In Education Spelling Bee Competition 2018 were held on Wednesday.

The winner schools of age group 9-11 are: Convent of Jesus & Mary, Lahore; Froebel’s International School, Lahore; PakTurk International Schools & Colleges – Asifa Irfan Girls, Lahore; and Beaconhouse School System, Gujrat.

The winner schools of age group 12-14 are: DHA Senior School for Girls, Lahore; Lahore Grammar School – Ghalib Market; The City School – Shalimar Campus, Lahore; and Hamdard Public School, Lahore.

Mr Tanwir Shah and David Purrington were pronouncers and Fatimah Usman, Saaima Nazir, Farkhanda Shakil and Nighat Siddique were judges of the competition. Saba Sohail and Rabeea Salman were Dawn moderators.

Winners from Lahore will compete with the Multan and Faisalabad pool winners in the regional championship that will be held on Oct 20 in Lahore. Three students in each age group from Multan and Faisalabad pool rounds have already qualified for the regional contest.

Thirty-six schools participated in the Multan pool round held on Oct 3 and 4 and 35 schools participated in the Faisalabad pool round on Sept 27.

This competition is being held by The Dawn Media Group and the judges are provided by the Oxford University Press. The national championship is scheduled to be held on Nov 1 in Karachi where the regional champions in the three age groups from Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad will compete amongst each other.

More than 7,000 children from nine to 17 years from across Pakistan are participating in the competition.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2018