John Locke Essay Competition · 2026 questions
John Locke Science & Technology Essay Questions
Science and Technology is new in 2026 and its three questions are not about science; they are about how societies should relate to it. Students who write about the technology lose to students who write about the argument.
The 2026 questions below are the official set. The 2027 questions are expected in late January 2027 and this page will carry them within 48 hours.
The 2026 Science & Technology questions, one by one
Quoted verbatim from the John Locke Institute. For each: what the examiners are testing, where strong students lose marks, the argument lines that hold up over 2,000 words, and what to read before you write.
What it is really asking
Whether open contestation (Mill, Popper) is what makes science work, or whether misinformation at scale now overwhelms it. The provocative framing wants you to find the real tension and locate it.
The trap
Writing about anti-vaccine posts. The question is structural: is science a special case of free enquiry, or a discipline that needs gatekeeping the wider public sphere lacks?
Lines of argument that can carry 2,000 words
- Science is institutionalised free speech (Popper's conjectures and refutations; Merton's norms), so the enemy of science is not free speech but its absence inside the institutions: replication crises, publication bias, suppressed dissent.
- The asymmetry problem: falsehoods spread faster and cheaper than corrections (Vosoughi, Roy and Aral, 2018). That is a real cost of free speech to public understanding, not to science itself; keep the two apart.
- The censorship cost: cases where scientific consensus was wrong and dissent was punished (Semmelweis, Lysenkoism as the extreme). Any restriction rule must survive those cases.
Read first
- Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper (chapter 1)
- The spread of true and false news online, Vosoughi, Roy and Aral, Science, 2018
- On Liberty, John Stuart Mill (chapter 2)
What the judges reward in Science & Technology
The official criteria are knowledge and understanding, competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. In this category that means:
- 1Philosophy of science and ethics applied to technology, rather than description of the technology.
- 2Numbers where the question is about resources.
- 3Historical cases used to test rules for the present.
- 4Precision about what kind of "should" the question is asking.
No published winning essay yet
Science & Technology was introduced in 2026, so the Institute has not yet published a winning essay in this category. The closest models are the published Economics, Politics-adjacent and Philosophy winners, which we take apart paragraph by paragraph in our guide to the published essays.
Past winning essays, analysedHow to prepare for the 2027 Science & Technology questions before they are released
- 1
Read Popper's first chapter and Mill's second; two of the three questions turn on them.
- 2
For the space question, do the budget arithmetic yourself from primary sources (NASA, OECD, WHO) and cite it.
- 3
For the ChatGPT question, read the Kant passage on animals; it is short and it is the key.
- 4
Because the category is new, borrow register from a first-prize Philosophy essay, not from technology journalism.
John Locke Essay Competition prep for Science & Technology
John Locke Basics
12 group sessions plus 6 hours of 1-on-1 mentorship, from question choice to a submission-ready draft. 38 of our 41 students were shortlisted in 2026.
Questions about the Science & Technology category
No. The 2026 questions are about free speech, resource allocation and ethics, and they are judged as philosophy and policy. A student who knows Popper and Mill is better placed than one who knows rocketry. Where a question is about resources, as the space question is, you do need to find and use real budget figures.
The other nine categories
John Locke guides
The complete guide
Eligibility, rules, dates, judging and prizes in one place.
John Locke Essay Competition prep
All four programmes, compared, with the 2026 results and the 2027 timeline.
Deadline and timeline 2027
Every date, confirmed or expected, on one page.
The interview after shortlisting
What the Institute says, what students report, how to prepare.
Past winning essays, analysed
The seven published prize essays, paragraph by paragraph.
Is it prestigious, and worth entering?
What a shortlist, commendation or prize is worth in admissions.
Free essay planner
Question deconstruction, argument map and self-audit sheet.
2027 dates and changes tracker
What is confirmed, what is expected, and every 2026 rule change.
The competition from Dubai and the UAE
How the calendar sits against UAE school terms and exam seasons.