The Perse Coding Team Challenge

For the first time in St. Julian’s life, the Computing department ran the Perse Coding Team Challenge. This competition for UK and international secondary schools pits teams of students in Years 7 to 11 (England & Wales nomenclature) against each other in a timed automated challenge across two rounds, each of which can be sat at any point in a nominated working fortnight under local invigilation.

There were in total 23 students (one Year 7, two Year 9, fifteen Year 10 and five Year 11) participating in Round 1 during the last two weeks, where questions were simple and short. Pairs of students (or solo) worked on a single computer to complete as many questions as they could in the 40 minutes allowed. For the R1 senior set (Year groups 10-11 in England & Wales nomenclature), Q1-6 were worth three points with Q7-10 worth five points. The junior set (Y7-9) had seven questions each worth three points. There was a range of easy questions with most questions solvable in well under ten lines of code.

Coding submissions (via the online interface) were supported in a number of different languages (Python, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript and Visual Basic.Net): all students at St. Julian's used Python.

We are very happy that so many of you participated and can not wait to see the results. We hope to see many of you entering Round 2 in March.

Well done young coders!

Computing Department