Lessons got off to a storming start yesterday in Catz’ bright and inspiring modern classrooms. Mathematicians considered the patterns and curiosities to be found in the study of numbers, looking in particular at sequences and prime numbers. The Business Challenge group went through the basics of economic theory, such as scarcity, production frontiers and opportunity cost, and turned their thinking towards the role of enterprise within this framework. Teacher Ray Abraham provided the following helpful and thought-provoking definition:

“Scarce resources can be broken down into four key ingredients: land, labour, capital and enterprise. Land includes all natural resources; labour includes all physical and mental effort; capital includes machinery and other items that go into further production; and enterprise is the art of combining the other three factors in the production process.”

The Global Issues seminar also drew students into deep thought and conversation. Yesterday the issue on the agenda was the Ebola outbreak, as a point of departure for considering the interconnectedness of global issues: the disease outbreak in West Africa in 2013-2016 was strongly affected and worsened by the context of extreme poverty, poor healthcare infrastructure, and ineffective government that has long afflicted many countries in the region. Similarly, the international aid superstructure led to minor cases in other countries such as the UK, the US, and Spain, as returning humanitarian workers were diagnosed and hospitalised with the disease.

After some free time exploring the city’s sights, shopping and sweet treats―Hardys Sweet Shop, which offers traditional confectionery to the sweet-toothed on the High Street, found many fans among our bunch―students hunkered down for an evening of brain-racking and team-work, as they faced the fiendish prospect of the ORA Quiz.