The All-Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) is an annual competition where students ‘solve puzzles in languages they don’t know’ while having great fun. On January 20, 2025 8 Students from St. Kilian’s and around 880 from across Ireland sat the first in-house round, and the best 100 went on to compete in the Finals in DCU in March. Our contestants Michael Costello (11th class ) and Jacob Roantree (9th class) represented St. Kilian’s in the finals and were extraordinarily successful: Jacob got 5th place overall and is the Junior Champion, and Michael achieved the best results of all winning 1st place and is crowned Senior Champion! Michael and his 3 team members will travel to Taipeh this summer to represent Ireland in the World Linguistics Olympiad.
On April 29th, 2025, the winners and their parents gathered at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) for the All-Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) 2025 Awards Ceremony. We are incredibly proud to celebrate Michael and Jacob for winning the Senior and Junior Champion Awards this year. We are the only school which has managed this achievement since the competition was established in Ireland. Since the early days, St. Kilian’s also always had students in the Final Round, and this is the 3rd time that one of our students reached the Final: Imogen Grumley-Traynor, Eliska Dvorakova in the last year and now Michael. A big ‘Thank you’ to Dr. Baum-Sheridan who puts a lot of effort into her Linguistics groups each year. Congratulations to the boys and best of luck to Michael in Taipeh!
