The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall present The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education

Today, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall presented The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

 The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes are the highest National Honour awarded to UK colleges and universities. They are presented every two years to universities and colleges who submit work judged to show excellence, innovation, impact and deliver real public benefit. 

Today, 22 universities and colleges from across the UK were awarded prizes in recognition of a range of work.

 Institutions honoured this year include the University of Exeter, whose team was awarded a prize for their research into ways to identify and remove the environmental threat from micro-plastics, and Manchester Metropolitan University, who won a prize for their multilingual poetry competition 'Mother Tongue Other Tongue'.

The annual competition encourages children who speak a community language at home to celebrate their ‘mother tongue’ by writing a poem in it, and for pupils learning a new language at school to write a poem in their ‘other tongue’.

In the Ballroom, The Prince presented medals and The Duchess gave out scrolls to the winners. The prize itself consists of a silver gilt medallion and a decorated and inscribed certificate granting the award, signed by Her Majesty The Queen.