Ms Davies (Computer Science Teacher)

On Friday 19th March, Year 8 students Tiya Dhaliwal, Abigail Rocque, Asha Kirkpatrick and Holly Blewitt took part in the semi-finals of the NCSC CyberFirst competition.

The CyberFirst Girls’ Competition is an annual cybersecurity challenge for Year 8 students. 42 students forming 11 teams entered the competition at BGS, along with 6,500 other entrants across the UK. In January, Cyberspace won the school round and their high scores meant they were selected as one of 124 teams to go forward to the regional semi-finals.

The students are now looking forward to entering other challenges and competitions in Computer Science. Tiya advises next year’s applicants, currently in Year 7, to “Believe in what you do, to achieve even further!”

The students demonstrated their problem solving and research skills against the very best teams in the region to solve as many puzzles as possible in cybersecurity, networking, cryptograph, logic and coding. With only 10 out of 125 teams going forward to the national finals, the timed competition was tightly fought.

Organised by the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre), part of GCHQ, the competition aims to provide a fun but challenging environment to encourage and inspire the next generation of young women to consider computer science as an option with a view to a future career in cyber security.