St Mary's School students score above Cambridgeshire and UK-wide averages in the Oxford University Computing Challenge

Following the outstanding successes of our Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6 girls in the ‘Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge 2023’ in November,  six of our Year 6 girls (who achieved scores in the top 10% nationally out of the 117,539 students in their age group) were invited to participate in the online ‘Oxford University Computing Challenge 2024’. 

This is an invitation-only challenge for talented UK students to produce fully programmed solutions to computational thinking problems within strict time constraints. 

They were also joined by six girls currently in Years 7, 8 & 9, who were invited to participate as a result of their exceptional performances in the OUCC competition whilst at the Junior School.  The older girls were supported remotely via Teams and email by Mr. Severy, Computer Science teacher, throughout their preparations, before coming back to the Junior School to participate in the Challenge itself.

The Challenge took place during the week beginning 15th January and the official results have just been released.  Nationally, 6,441 students participated in the ‘Junior’ age category and 9,735 students participated in the ‘Intermediate’ age category.  We are delighted to announce that two of our girls (one in each age category) have been presented with a ‘Distinction Award’, putting them in the top 1.5% of all the entrants.  This was an extremely impressive achievement in the context of just 251 ‘Distinction Awards’ being presented nationally across those age categories, and almost 15% of entrants across the country scoring 0 points in what is an extremely difficult challenge.  Many congratulations to Grace W. and Diya S. for these exceptional scores.

We are also delighted with our girls' overall performance compared to County and National Results:

Junior (Year 6 and 7)

Intermediate (Years 8 and 9)

Mr Severy, as their Computer Science teacher, was delighted for the girls:

"Once again, the girls have demonstrated their resilience, perseverance, and enthusiasm by competing under pressure at the highest level.  All of their hard work during the preparations for the competition really did pay off and they should be extremely proud of what they have achieved."