Mr Potter (Director of Digital Strategy)

Last Saturday, BGS entered their first ever Computer Science competition at the Lockheed Martin CodeQuest competition in Ampthill. Ella Foley and Joanna Solomon in Year 10 were up against nine other Sixth Form teams from other schools in Bedfordshire. The girls placed fifth overall, which when you consider the age and experience gap between them and the other teams it was an incredible result. 

The aim of the competition was to solve various coding puzzles in a two and a half hour time slot. The puzzles could be solved in any order and they were each worth a different number of points depending on the difficulty of the puzzle. Ella and Joanna used a variety of techniques, from planning solutions using pseudocode, and then using various coding constructs to make their ideas work. 

The girls were part of a global network of student coders which saw several other teams in other areas of the UK, Poland, Australia and the USA all involved in the competition. In total, there were globally 1700 students involved.