ALEX LAMING, HEAD OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

In the week of 15 January this year many of our talented computer scientists took part in the Oxford University Computing Challenge, which is the follow up to the Bebras challenge and for students who achieved the top 10% of results in the country.

We had four Year 7 students, three Year 8 students and two Year 9 students qualifying directly. The Year 7 and 9 Students completed the Junior and Intermediate level tasks making use of the Blockly programming language to devise challenging algorithms to solve problems such as maze navigation.

The problems involve a very high level of logical thinking and computation in a fairly short time limit. There are tasks graded A - C in terms of complexity where students can bid for higher marks at risk of losing some they already won in previous tasks.

Sadly none of our students made the final round but they all did impressively well and displayed Queenswood Qualities of courage and resourcefulness in achieving the passage to the competition with a top 10% score in the country.

Below are some screengrabs from the challenge, and a photo of Liv R (Year 7) with her certificate of participation.