TOM – Tournament of Minds –  is a problem-solving competition that is one of the enrichment highlights of the year at Herzlia! Pupils have six weeks in which to solve their challenges creatively and collaboratively and to prepare to present to a panel! Herzlia High and Primary Schools has 54 pupils across nine teams competing.

Tournament of Minds (TOM) is a series of enquiry-based learning challenges across various disciplines like STEM, social sciences, language and literature and arts and culture.

“The Inquiry Based learning model is, on so many levels, an engaging and constructivist model of education for schools and for pupils to encourage all the thinking skills we would most like to develop in our pupils: Curiosity, collaboration, consciousness and creativity. Pupils select a problem to solve, in a team, and solutions are presented to judges who mark according to a memo and their own experience. There is also a “spontaneous challenge” presented on the day which measures how effectively a team works under pressure and collectively to provide effective solutions which are substantiated by sound reasoning and the ability to apply knowledge and skills together.” Marc Falconer

“The Tournament of Minds provides and embraces the necessity for international competitions to shift substantially from Olympiad-style ‘individual participant’ competitions to opportunities that allow for collaborative team participation, which include the use of different global competencies required in today’s world,” says Traci Salter, the Tournament of Minds Regional Director for South Africa.

​This year, TOM South Africa is making history, with the expansion of its national footprint to a first-ever Western Cape face-to-face regional. There will also be a KwaZulu Natal regional and a joint Gauteng / South African final together with additional provinces joining the competition virtually. Pupils that qualify can join the international competition hosted in Australia together with nine other countries across the globe, including New Zealand, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE.