The Tournament of the Minds pits students from schools across Australia and even internationally against each other in a variety of problem solving tasks.

The Australasian finals of the competition brought together 60 finalist schools in Canberra last Saturday, with the competition being opened at Parliament House by Governor-General Michael Jeffreys.

Forbes Public Principal John Willing said the school was very proud of the students’ achievement in taking out second place.

“They did extremely well,” he said.

“Second is a fantastic result, though, especially when you consider they were up against teams from all over Australia as well as Singapore.”

Primary and secondary students can be involved in the Tournament of the Minds and competition takes place in three categories including language and literature, maths and engineering and social sciences.

The competition is two tiered with the students required to work on a long-term challenge for six weeks and also a spontaneous challenge presented on the day.

They are required to present their solutions in a creative and inventive way.

Forbes Public had a great run into the finals scoring wins in both the regional and state finals.

In the regional finals the school won the Far West division ahead of Condobolin Public School and Peak Hill Central School.

The state finals held in Sydney were always going to see the standard of competition increase with 86 schools vying for the title of state champions.

Forbes Public came up against the Hunter Valley Grammar School, NSW Hunter Region, NSW Far West Region, Mondanville Public School and NSW North Coast Region and came home with the prize.

The Australasian Finals were to be biggest challenge of the students’ skills to date and in front of around 1000 people Forbes Public School was announced as runner-up in the nation wide competition.