Picture (L to R) Kate Armstrong, Mark Towers, Ray Keene OBE, Daniel Holiday, Dominic O'Brien, Tony Buzan and Phil Chambers.

The City of Sunderland College has dominated the UK Schools Memory Championships, which were held on the 19th of July, with five of the top ten competitors being their students. For the first time the championships were held in London at the prestigious Keyworth Centre made available by the kind generosity and support of London South Bank University.

Following his success winning in the regional heats in Newcastle in April, Sunderland student Mark Towers went on to win the national finals with a score of 1448 championship points from the four memory disciplines in the competition.

Fellow pupil Daniel Holliday was second with a close1436 points and Kate Armstrong of Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington achieved 1310 and was third.

A total of 91 pupils took part in the regional heats with 42 of them qualifying for the final. Three Memory World Records were broken this year with Rhiannon Green from Stanley School of Technology in Durham and Daniel Holliday of the City of Sunderland College both breaking the world record for the Random Words Discipline. Barbara Sliva, also of the City of Sunderland Collect broke the world record in the 15 Minute numbers discipline.

Now in its fourth year, the UK Schools Memory Championships, which has been sponsored once again by Aim Higher, uses the same competition format used by the top memorisers how compete in the prestigious World Memory Championships. This means they can compare their achievements to them in the World Rankings with memory competitors from 26 countries. The four memory disciplines used in the competition include memorising random words, numbers, dates and cards.

Tony Buzan, who founded the Mind Sport of Memory twenty years ago in 1991 and who staged the first World Memory Championships said "Learning how to memorise information is a crucial skill for pupils of all ages. Taking part in memory competitions is for the brain, what a workout in the gym is for the body."

The competition is organised by eight times World Memory Champion Dominic O’Brien and the Chief Arbiter of the World Memory Championships, Phil Chambers.

Said Phil "I was very impressed with the venue, the dedication of the arbiting team, made up of Student Ambassadors from the university, and especially the performance of the competitors". "The standard goes up every year, as evidenced by the three world records." "My passion for the competition stems mainly from the fact that the skills learned by the students are not just for memory sports but will last a lifetime and help them in their studies".