After last year’s small-scale fun of managing to find 6 students to take part in the inaugural CyberFirst Girls competition run by the NCSC (part of GCHQ), I proposed to take part again, as the rules had changed to pitch it at girls in Year 8. I happen to now teach 3 out of the 5 Year 8 classes at school, so it was much easier to convince a few more girls to give it a go.
This year 23 girls took part to form 6 teams. Every participant contributed in some small way, working together, trawling for answers to all manner of cyber security, cryptography, networking, logic and coding challenges. Only one team could be put forward to the grand final, and although Team Error put in great effort, they were not selected to be in the final 10 nationally.
I hope, however, their experience has further convinced them to continue with Computer Science in year 9, with a view to taking their GCSE.
Presenting the @BedfordGirlsSch #BGSY8 winners of the @ncsc #GirlsComp18 – S Arun, H Whalley, E Polhill and I Patel. They now wait to hear if they are in the top 10 in the UK for the grand final. Well done girls!#CompSci #WomenWhoCode #CyberSecurity #GirlsWhoCode pic.twitter.com/8ijYIKICQg
— BGS CompSci Dept (@BGSICT) February 6, 2018