St Columba’s Catholic Primary School Leichhardt North students Catherine Angelos and Molly Smith have been named joint state winners in the 2021 National History Challenge.

The National History Challenge is a research-based competition, run by the History Teachers’ Association of Australia, in which students explore a topic of their choosing while responding to a set theme. The 2021 theme was Significance: History Matters.

Year 3 student Catherine investigated the significance of Florence Nightingale’s contributions to the nursing industry in a Google Slides presentation. Year 4 student Molly wrote an essay that considered issues associated with the discovery of Mungo Man by Jim Bowler and his archaeological team.

The pair jointly took out top honours in the Primary 1 category (Years 1-4) for NSW and were presented with certificates in a ceremony at the ANZAC Memorial at Hyde Park on Monday, 6 December.

Inspiration strikes

Catherine said the idea for researching Florence Nightingale came to her after watching the TV series Horrible Histories.

“I had just watched an episode about Florence Nightingale and thought it would be a good topic because of its link to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Catherine explained.

“It’s really interesting that Florence Nightingale’s contributions continue to be used in modern nursing” – Catherine Angelos 

Meanwhile, Molly’s research was prompted by her teacher, Cara Fletcher-Murphy (St Columba’s Newman Facilitator and Diverse Learning Co-Ordinator).

“After Mrs Murphy told me the story of Mungo Man, I thought that the Aboriginal people hadn’t been treated the way they should have been and I felt we should show respect and understanding of how that made them feel,” Molly said.

“It shocked me to think about how the feelings of the …