Competitions

Overview

In addition to the VEX Robotics enrichment, Computer Science students of all age groups are invited to take part in a series of programming competitions throughout the year.

Competitions give students the chance to practise what they have learned in lesson and apply it to a range of different contexts.

All of the competitions are national and are undertaken by many thousands of students each year.

Bebras Computing Challenge

https://www.bebras.uk/

The Bebras Computing Challenge takes place for a period of two weeks in November of each year. Students are invited to solve a series of computational thinking puzzles in order to score as many points as possible.

Students across all year groups are invited to take part. In 2021-2022 this included over 500 students across NUAST.

The competition is broken down in to four age categories:

  • Juniors (age 10-12)
  • Intermediates (age 12-14)
  • Seniors (age 14-16)
  • Elite (age 16-18)

And points are given and taken away depending on the difficulty of the question answered.

  • A Questions (+6 points, -0 points)
  • B Questions (+9 points, -2 points)
  • C Questions (+12 points, -4 points)

Those students who score in the top 10% in the country are presented with a Gold award and invited to the Oxford University Computing Challenge in February.

Perse Coding Team Challenge

https://persecoding.net/

Teams of Year 7-11 students battle it out to win the pride of place inscription on our Braben competition cup.

Students submit short code solutions to a range of challenges which increase in difficulty across the two rounds and during a timed contest:

Round 1: 40 minutes, sat in pairs sharing 1 computer (medium security)
Round 2: 60 minutes, sat in threes with 1 computer each (higher security)

Oxford University Computing Challenge

https://oucc.uk/

The Oxford University Computing Challenge takes place in February each year following the Bebras challenge.

The OUCC is an invitation challenge for students in the UK aiming to help talented computational thinkers develop their skills by asking them to solve tasks with programmed solutions.

Invites are issued to those achieving a requisite score in the prior UK Bebras competition. A combination of blocks based challenges and text-coding challenges are set.

British Informatics Olympiad

https://olympiad.org.uk/

The British Informatics Olympiad (BIO) is an annual competition in computer programming for secondary schools and sixth form colleges. Any student who is under 19, in full time pre-university education and resident in mainland Britain, is eligible to take part and may win prizes including an expenses-paid trip to the prestigious International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).

The first stage of the BIO is a three-hour exam, taken at school, in which students solve problems with the aid of a computer. These are marked by a teacher and submitted for moderation. Based on the results of this exam, the top 15 competitors are invited to the BIO final in Cambridge during the Easter holidays. The best four make up the team to represent Britain at the IOI.

Results

2021-22 Bebras

  • 17x Students with the Gold Award (top 10% in UK)
  • 115x Students with Distinction
  • 112x Students with Merit

20210-22 Perse Round 1

  • 4x Students with Distinction
  • 2x Students with Merit
  • 8x Students with Higher Participation

March 2024

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