Having an opinion has never been a problem for a Dunedin student who has gained a top-level scholarship in history — and he still has two more years of school left.
Trinity Catholic College year 12 student Che McGivern, 16, has received an NZQA outstanding scholarship for history after completing exams for it last year.
Only 19 history outstanding scholarships were awarded across New Zealand and there were more than 7000 level 3 history candidates, putting Che in the top 0.27% of history students nationwide.
Che said he was good with words as opposed to numbers.
He had also always been interested in his Irish heritage and Ireland’s rich and complicated cultural history, he said.
His stepdad, who was from Oamaru, was also very interested in history and he would tell him about it in a very engaging way.
His teachers caught on he was quite keen on the subject back in year 8 when he was putting his hand up to answer every question.
He was placed in a year 11 class to listen and observe but ended up taking and passing NCEA level 1 history exams with excellence.
He completed level 2 in year 9 and level 3 in year 10 and scholarship was the logical next step.
Che said he was now working on scholarship for English and religious education and first-year history papers at the University of Otago.
He was keen on becoming a lawyer.
"I think I might be potentially less of one of those guys who’s at the top of a skyscraper making million-dollar deals and more like the type of people who would have helped my family in Belfast, you know, like the kind of grassroots pro bono sort of thing."
Former Columba College student Clara Ballantyne received a premier award with outstanding scholarships in art history, English, history and statistics as well as a scholarship in geography.
