Year 7 pupil Aryan has been shortlisted in this year’s John Locke Institute Global Essay Competition, having entered while in Year 6. This places him in the top 16% of over 34,000 participants from 101 countries. As an ‘Old Westminster’ himself, John Locke would undoubtedly take pride in Aryan’s remarkable achievement.

Aryan shares his thoughts on the competition and the inspiration behind his essay:

“The John Locke Global essay competition is an annual event consisting of seven subjects and a junior category enabling students to grow their minds. The essays are judged by distinguished academics from leading universities like Oxford and Princeton.

This year there were six questions in the junior category, of which one was on AI. Having learnt about free will in school, this invoked my thoughts to participate in this competition. Further inspired by Mr Lawson, who always encourages us to broaden our thoughts and critically analyse a concept, I was motivated to write the essay. This made me enter the competition as I wanted to try and consolidate my knowledge on AI in a single 2000-word essay. With AI being a prominent topic in the present and my passion towards coding I chose to write about – “When will advancing technology make most of us unemployable? What should we do about this?”

It was tough balancing both schoolwork and the essay, but I managed to keep squeezing any extra time that I had to complete the essay. In the end, the effort was worth it. Attending the awards ceremony at Grosvenor House was a pleasure, meeting other talented students around the world sharing similar interests. It was also thought-provoking hearing Liz Truss speak about the freedom of speech. Overall, this experience has helped me in enhancing my research and articulation skills, and my knowledge on the topic itself, AI.”

An inspiring feat for us all, well done, Aryan!