The All Souls Challenge

What we’re looking for

The All Souls Challenge is modelled on the Oxford All Souls examination, which sets open questions and asks what a candidate can make of them. We are not testing what you have been taught. We are looking for spirit and quality of thought: an argument that is your own, followed somewhere interesting, and backed up.

In the first round, entries explored AI in healthcare, imperialism and free will. Any discipline is welcome.

Who can enter

Any student in Year 12 or Year 13 at a school or college in the UK. There are no entry fees. One essay per student.

How to enter

1. Choose one of the three questions and write between 900 and 1,100 words.
2. Save your essay as a PDF or Word document named All-Souls-Challenge-FirstName-LastName.
3. Send it through the entry form below, or email it to info@empoweredvoices.org.uk with the subject line “All Souls Challenge Submission”.
4. The page confirms on screen that your essay has been received.

The questions

1. What is home?A place, a person, a feeling, a story we tell ourselves. Take it anywhere; the best answers will.
2. Legacy? Discuss.Deliberately open. Make the question your own rather than surveying it.
3. Would a world without lies be a better one?An invitation to argue with yourself: what honesty gives us, and what we might lose without lies.

How entries are judged

Entries are read anonymously, each under a random number, and assessed on originality and the extent to which their arguments are substantiated. Entries are judged by the Empowered Voices team.

Prizes

£500 and a MacBook Neo for first place, £250 for second, £100 for third, and seven Notable Recognition certificates. The top three become Empowered Voices Fellows.

Key dates

Opened Monday 2 November 2026. Entries close at 23:59 on Friday 18 December 2026. Results will be announced on this page and by email to every entrant at 1pm on Monday 18 January 2027.

Rules

All work must be your own; plagiarism means immediate disqualification. You may use AI tools to brainstorm, but work written by AI will be disqualified. Judges stop reading at the 1,100th word. One entry per student.

Past winning entries

Three essays from the first round, judged in April 2026. Read them for the standard rather than the subject: each follows an argument of its own somewhere interesting and backs it up.

1. First place
   Jo, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, SouthamptonIf you could uninvent one thing, what would it be, and what would we lose by losing it?

   On the erbium-doped fibre amplifier, the invention beneath the intercontinental internet, and the world that would have grown up without it.

   Read the essay (PDF) →
2. Second place
   EmilyDo we discover who we are, or do we decide who we are?

   Identity as something neither given at birth nor easily grasped, but built and rebuilt through experience.

   Read the essay (PDF) →
3. Third place
   Zahra, Roundhay School, LeedsIf you could uninvent one thing, what would it be, and what would we lose by losing it?

   Not AI in medicine, but the complacency with which it has been adopted; written in her second language.

   Read the essay (PDF) →

Questions