Schools' Challenge

With questions written in-house and then mailed to local coordinators who would organise regional tournaments to supply a national final competition (and who would also receive a percentage of the profits in exchange for their services), Schools' Challenge soon spread quickly across the UK.

In 1985, Schools' Challenge was taken over by Sue and Paul Sims,[4] who would run the competition for the next thirty-seven years[4] and become its best-known figures in the process.

Bonus rounds were changed from being worth five points apiece to worth ten points, a 'plate' repechage competition would be made available for losing national quarter-finalists, a limit of two older (Year 11 and above) students per team was applied to the Senior competition[1] and Schools' Challenge would become reliably divided into the sixteen regions[5] that would send schools to the eight-team National Finals every year.

The continuing pandemic would furthermore lead to the complete cancellation of the 2020-21 season,[7] before Sue and Paul Sims returned for a final year.

After a substantial period of uncertainty, Ben Mooney, head of Northern Ireland-based BM Quizzing[8] partnered with former regional organiser Robert Grant to acquire the properties of Schools' Challenge from Sue and Paul Sims in November 2022, before formally re-launching the competition in January 2023.

With the old system of regional organisers and in-person hosts not revivable,[9] Ben Mooney in particular oversaw a radical overhaul of Schools' Challenge- social media channels[10] were set up, more popular culture questions were added to question sets and an all-new website (the first ever) in particular[11] was designed to help modernise and expand a competition that had effectively not been in decades.

[12] However, Ben Mooney would leave Schools' Challenge that summer due to personal commitments, handing over sole control to Robert Grant with his wife Allison and marking a third management in three seasons.

They are currently overseeing the 2023-24 season, having continued the online staging of preliminary rounds adopted the year before, with the latest National Finals underway during Spring 2024.

This division also allows younger students to compete on a more equal footing with one another and is designed to prevent certain age groups from dominating the competition.

The most successful school in the Senior competition's history is current champions Westminster, who have won a record ten times- all in the last twenty years.

All-female teams have been however more successful in the Junior competition, with most notably King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham winning in 1987 and 2005.