Year 5 Evans River Community School student Amara Alderman and Year 6 Tregeagle Public School student Harper Thompson are two of the state’s 64 top young spellers who will battle it out at the Q Theatre in Penrith this Friday, 7 November, at the 2025 Premier’s Spelling Bee state finals.
The Northern Rivers students will go head-to-head with Year 6 student William Weatherall from Coonabarabran Public School who is making an extraordinary fourth consecutive appearance alongside four other returning senior finalists, three who have moved up from the junior ranks since last year.
Also vying for one of two winning titles is the 2024 junior division winner, Wafiq Ayyash from New Lambton Public School who is back to defend his title.
Amara and Harper will travel some of the furthest distance to compete, joining students from as far west as Broken Hill and as far south as Bega in pursuit of the title.
All 2025 returning finalists are from regional NSW.
Spelling legends
Hargraves Public School in NSW’s Central West is the only school to represent in both the junior and senior finals, with junior finalist, Year 2 student Jack Primmer one of this year’s youngest competitors.
While the competition might be serious, the enthusiasm is light-hearted with six of this year’s finalists citing ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ as their favourite word to spell, while three went with the old faithful ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’.
The Premier’s Spelling Bee, introduced in 2004 by former Premier Bob Carr, has become a much-loved literacy event that inspires confidence and curiosity in language among NSW students.
The junior and senior finalists from Years 2 to 6 represent the top 0.03% of almost 200,000 students who took part in school spelling bees across some 1,000 NSW schools this year.
Among this year’s competitors are 23 finalists who speak a language other than English at home, making up 36 percent of the competing cohort and representing 16 language groups.
In August, almost 2,000 students competed online for the regional finals, a format that remains a popular and inclusive competition approach.
The Premier’s Spelling Bee will be hosted by ABC personalities Toni Matthews for the junior final (9:15am to 12.00pm) and Mark Humphries for the senior final (1:30pm to 4:30pm).
Contestants will begin with ‘seen’ word lists provided by Macquarie Dictionary before facing ‘unseen’ challenges that test spelling skill and composure under pressure.
For more information about the NSW Premier’s Spelling Bee, visit The Arts Unit website.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
