Congratulations to eight of our Year 8 students who took part in this year’s CyberFirst competition, run by GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre.

The two teams of four spent supervised time over a series of lunch breaks and after school to complete the online challenge. It included four categories: Logic & Coding, Cryptography, Networking, and Cyber Security. The content for each category of the competition was consistent with subjects within the Computer Science syllabus from the National Curriculum. It also contained some advanced cyber topics that are not covered in traditional education, to stretch the lateral thinking and additional cyber knowledge of the teams.

Commenting, Mr Fauceglia said, “The girls did incredibly well at what was a really tricky series of challenges, designed to stretch them beyond what they have learnt in school while still having fun. I commend GCHQ for running such an interesting competition and encouraging more females into the profession.”

The students that took part were: Alice D, Asia S, Flora P-P, Millie H, Nicole M, Alex E, Romy S, and Domini A.

Commenting, Alex E said, “It was fun to work on our own, in pairs and as a team on the challenges. I’d definitely take part again if I could and I enjoyed the experience.”

If you are interested in learning more about GCHQ’s work to encourage more females into computer science and cyber security, the BBC’s Life Scientific podcast ran an interview with Sue Black, mentioning the CyberFirst competition. It can be heard here.