Year 6 and Year 7 girls take on Oxford University Computing Challenge 2022

Following the outstanding successes of our Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6 girls in the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge 2021 in November, four of our Year 6 girls (who achieved scores in the top 10% nationally out of the 87,130 students in their age group) were invited to participate in the online Oxford University Computing Challenge 2022. 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 four Year 7 girls who were invited to participate as a result of their exceptional performances in last year’s OUCC competition whilst at the Junior School. The Year 7 girls were supported remotely via Teams and email by Mr. Severy throughout their preparations, before coming back to the Junior School to participate in the Challenge itself.

The Challenge took place during the week beginning 7 February and the official results have just been released. Nationally, 4,142 students participated in the ‘Junior’ age category, and we are delighted to announce that four of the girls have been presented with a ‘Merit Award’, putting them in the top 17% of all the entrants. In addition, Diya S. was presented with a 'Distinction Award' for her amazing score of 85%, which missed out on a place in the OUCC Grand Final by just 4 points and put her in the top 2.5% nationally! This was an extremely impressive achievement in the context of just 101 ‘Distinction Awards’ being presented nationally and almost 1% of entrants across the country scoring 0 points in what is an extremely difficult challenge.

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

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.