Shropshire students crack code to land world top five spot
Only weeks after a third placed finish in a European coding competition, a team of 11 Shropshire students has gained fifth position in a worldwide challenge.
The gifted coding champions from Acton Burnell-based Concord College were the only UK-based school in the top 10 of the worldwide competition.
Post-event statistics reveal that 1,734 schools took part in the competitions from 98 different countries. A total of 2,578 classes, consisting of almost 35,000 students, competed.
“This is a truly fantastic achievement on the part of the form four students,” said Concord College’s computer science teacher Tim Curtis.
“Hot on the heels of their impressive podium finish in the European competition, the students used their experience to effectively solve further coding challenges.”
The worldwide competition was hosted by Codementum, a game-based computer science platform led by teachers and educators.
According to Codementum, the competitions were established with the basic goal of teaching coding to children and to provide e-learning opportunities to form a basis for advanced computer skills required at both primary and secondary education level.
Taking part in the senior competition for 12-16 year olds, the 11 form four Concord College students, named CoB23, took on 20 challenges, trying to overcome them in as little time as possible.
Challenges ranged from basic coding knowledge to coding application, repeat loops and arrays. Across all competitors worldwide, 5,671,270 lines of coding were written and 635,926 challenges were successfully completed.
Russian Concord student Mariia Lukanina, 15, said: “I’m new to coding, but this competition was still very exciting to do.
“Our team was successfully because we were all working together by sharing our knowledge. The friendly environment and team spirit helped a lot.”
Fellow teammate Cyril Chan, 14, from Hong Kong, has an interest in computer science and IT.
He said: “For each question the code itself might be simple and easy to understand.
“But having a wrong permutation of them might cause big problems and therefore the team had to pay close attention to the very small details.
“I believe the team’s remarkable success was a result of teamwork and co-operation amongst members – we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.”
