Powerful Presentations for the EPQ

Students took to the stage in the Burrell Theatre last night to present their EPQ presentations. The EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) is an established A-Level programme that equips students with a range of professional, academic and personal skills.

Each student is permitted to venture into a personalised area of interest from an option of four (artefact, dissertation, investigation and performance) where they are required to research, reference, discuss and create a final performance given to a non-specialist audience.

This year’s cohort brought a strong and diverse portfolio of presentations to inspire, challenge and inform the audience.

Max questioned, ‘Can the criticism of and allegations of corruption and cronyism against the Government in the Covid-19 Pandemic (2020-2022) be justified?’ in his fascinating dissertation. He defined corruption and cronyism before looking at the impacts of each and then applied this to the PPE contracts and test and trace system, both of which came under fire during the pandemic. The author viewed and discussed actions from a legal, economic and moral perspective using financial and political implications as evidence, before moving on to suggestions for further research and reform.

Hannah discussed, ‘The Kyoto Protocol and Geopolitics: How well do mass climate conferences work?’ in her dissertation, which explored the extent to which the Kyoto Protocol has reduced Greenhouse gas emissions and the effectiveness of its targets in general. The author concluded that conflicting views and agendas reduce the effectiveness of mass climate conferences, but that they could work better with more ambitious and SMART targets moving forwards.

Christopher investigated ‘How Social Media could have affected the strength of political views in the younger generation’, analysing the link between the strength of political opinion and social media in different generations. He concluded that there didn’t appear to be a significant difference between the strengths of political opinion across generations, despite a higher usage in younger participants.

Amari created RevisionBank for his artefact, a web application to help with revision. This exciting digital project was designed to make revision easier and more convenient, with targeted revision ‘cards’ sent digitally to subscribers, ranked by difficulty.

Hari’s dissertation questioned ‘Can the decision taken by the US and UK to go to war with Iraq in 2003 be morally justified?’. His investigation used the just war theory of military ethics to weigh up whether all diplomatic avenues were fully explored and the impact of the invasion on the aggressor nation before making his conclusions on the moral justification for the invasion.

India’s talk looked at ‘Should abortion become legal from ethical and social perspectives in regards to the right of the woman?’ for her dissertation. She set out to reach a justified conclusion on how effectively better education could help women around the world to make more informed judgements surrounding unwanting pregnancies.

Ota’s dissertation investigated ‘The Validity behind psychological research on Artificial Intelligence’ in a fascinating talk that aimed to investigate how AI impacts our lives, how AI learns and what the benefits of AI research are. It was concluded that AI isn’t currently developed enough to be representative of human decision-making, therefore it can’t be used for psychological research at present, but may be useful in the future, with certain ethical implementations put in place.

To finish the night, Adam explored ‘The culture in skateboarding and the prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping that comes along with it’. The project aimed to identify and question the validity of the stereotypes prevalent within the UK in a video documentary (his artefact). His outcomes were that the common stereotype of skateboarders was true to an extent, but that opposition was emerging amongst skateboarders to actively challenge this and to overcome prejudice within society.

A huge well done to all of the students who took part in this evening and to the staff, supervisors and audience who supported them throughout their journeys. Thank you to Mrs Thurlow and Mrs Stone for their continued efforts and support in this qualification.

Should you wish to find out more about the EPQ at Truro School, please contact Mrs Thurlow at [email protected].