Ten local students will line up against the State's best spellers after winning their regional final to secure a spot in the State final of the NSW Premier's Spelling Bee.
The students won one of 60 regional finals involving 820 schools which took place online over the past fortnight.
The local winners are:
- Nila Dinesh, Girraween Public School – Junior Final
- Liba Idrees, Hassall Grove Public School – Junior Final
- Makeez Amid, Hassall Grove Public School – Senior Final
- Heeji Kim, Lidcombe Public School - Junior Final
- Rafa Sapungan, Lidcombe Public School – Senior Final
- Saarth Deo, Wentworthville Public School – Junior Final
- Erin Cabisidan, Crawford Public School – Senior Final
- Bryce Macaraeg, Guilford Public School - Senior Final
- Elaine Chen, St Clair Public School – Senior Final
- Shriram Kirubhakar, Westmead Public School – Senior Final
They have booked themselves a place in the prestigious NSW Premier's Spelling Bee Junior and Senior State finals to be held on November 4 at the Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Centre, Ultimo.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said it was exciting to see students across the State testing their spelling prowess.
"I congratulate all the students who have participated in the regionals finals – you have already won by making it this far and demonstrating your fabulous spelling skills," Mr Perrottet said.
Minister for Education and Early Learning Sarah Mitchell said she was delighted events like the Spelling Bee were once again on the school calendar and excited to witness the State final in November.
"It is a tribute to schools and the Arts Unit that they have found new ways to deliver this wonderful event while keeping students safe," she said.
The Arts Unit Premier's Spelling Bee Support Officer Desiree Lane said the move to online regionals finals had been well received, particularly in the bush.
"We have had feedback from some of our more remote schools on how wonderful the new format is because it allows them to participate where previously long distances had made travelling to regional finals difficult," Ms Lane said.
Nearly 1600 students competed in the online regional finals from a starting pool of 165,000 participating students with the most remote student from Bourke-Walgett School of Distance Education, who lives about four hours' drive from Bourke.
The online format has seen more small schools make it through to the State finals with one senior competition going through to the 27th round before a winner was declared.
A special congratulations was also made to Alstonville Public School student Marley Hume, who sacrificed himself to runner-up after audio issues meant his rival, Jesmond Public School's Isaac Hood was misheard.
"Marley and Isaac were going hammer and tong, and the Jesmond student spelled a word deemed incorrect (his audio was atrocious), and Marley, actually piped up and said no, Jake spelled his word correctly, thus relegating himself to second place," Ms Lane said.
Now in its 19th year, the Premier's Spelling Bee was introduced in 2004 as a fun way for primary school students to engage in spelling. The program includes activities to encourage all students to improve their vocabulary and spelling and to promote literacy skills in combination with the English K-6 Syllabus.
Junior division includes words such as embargo; cavalcade; notary; and scrupulous, while the senior division participants will wrangle words like besotted; expostulate; hereditary; and subservient.
NSW students consistently achieve top results in spelling in NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy). Annually NSW ranks first in Australia in spelling across all year groups (Years 3, 5, 7 and 9).
To compete at the State final a student must have won their school Spelling Bee, their zone and regionals final.
The NSW Premier's Spelling Bee is proudly supported this year by Major Sponsor, Grok Academy, Media Partner, ABC Radio Sydney and Official Word List Supplier, Macquarie Dictionary.
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