Primary Coding League 2024

This year was the very first year of this band new computing competition for primary children. Charlie MacKenzie, a primary computing teacher himself, created the competition. Here is some information about the League https://www.primarycodingleague.co.uk/about-1.

The competition covered the full academic year, with coding challenges being released every 2 months. The challenges used Scratch 3.0 as well as some different coding platforms, some the children had never used before. The competition ran across the whole of Europe with ninety seven teams taking part, equating to over four hundred pupils. Its format was like the running of a League table, similar to football leagues, where children received a criterion of content that had to be included in their resource and were judged on this as well as content, creativity and skills.

A maximum of nine children were chosen from year five and six and took part in teams of three. Roughly, every two months they received a new challenge, the platform to complete it on and then a submission date. As with any new competition, the children who took part were very nervous at the beginning, but they soon settled down to let their creative juices flow. Every morning before school, they arrived for their workshops full of ideas and enthusiasm.

The Hills teams started towards the bottom of the league, but as skills and confidence grew with each new challenge, they began to rise. By Challenge 4, they were in the top 20 places, after the penultimate challenge, Challenge 5, they were in the top 10, with one team scraping into the top 5! The children were speechless at their league placings!

Challenge 6 resources were entered into the judges’ platform on Friday 4^th July. Hopefully, final placements will be known before schools break up for the summer holidays. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good scores!

I would like to thank all the team members – Elliott, Rafe, Zoe, Benny, James, Rafi, Lily, Dario and Lottie for their commitment and enthusiasm in this brand new experience. Their team working, collaboration, creativity and skills really strengthened and shone through in their entries. I am immensely proud of them all.

********************** NEWSFLASH ANNOUNCEMENT ******************************

12:15pm email received

Results are in for the final challenge, and we are so proud to announce the final scores are as follows: 

 5th place - Team 7 Hills

 7th place - Team 5 Hills

 8th place - Team 6 Hills

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BCS Cyber Challenge 2025

The annual coding competition held by the British Computer Society’s Bedford and Northants branch had its Finals presentation afternoon on Thursday 3^rd July, at Cranfield University. 9 children entered the competition commencing with after school workshops for ten weeks prior to prepare resources using Scratch programming software based around Online Safety (Y5) and Dealing with Cyberbullying (Y6). https://bbn.bcs.org/competition.php

The children worked on a range of individual and team entries, submitting their resources to a judges panel two weeks prior to the Finals Presentation Day.

I always get as nervous as the children do on the day, as we ate our early lunch we talked, laughed and tried to relax for what was ahead. We left the school en route to Cranfield University with a flurry of excitement and nerves, both at the big event we were attending and a brand new experience for some of the children.

Once we arrived there, we registered ourselves, climbed the big spiral staircase and were all greeted by our host and organiser, Dr Ip-Shing Fan, a Senior Lecturer in Enterprise Systems. He informed us that there were over 100 entries from schools all over Luton, Bedford and Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and surrounding villages. That really increased our nerves!

After some general information about the venue, we watched as a few children were called up from each year group to demonstrate their resource on the gigantic Interactive screen. Elliott was one of the children called up to demonstrate his game. When he returned to his seat, he held his hand out shaking! He said it was very nerve-wracking!

After the demonstrations, we awaited the announcements for place winners for each year groups, as usual starting with Year 5. The children concentrated so hard, giving each other smiles and arm pats of reassurance for the announcement. Unfortunately, we were not successful in receiving a top 3 position this year, but the children were still very positive and want to return next year for another go!

The next announcement was for the top 3 awards for year 6. This year we received two awards, a third place and a first place. Everyone, especially the two winners, were speechless on hearing their names. Words of congratulations echoed around our seating area from the other children towards our winners, smiles and relieved faces on our recipients.

After the awards and photo opportunities, we had a quick break with a drink and snacks. Then it was out to look around a giant Boeing aeroplane that they use for demonstrations of robotics The children had a whole group photograph in front of the plane, before wandering over to look at the runway area through the fence. We were instructed to look over the back of the runway for a black and orange plane – it belonged to a famous Formula 1 driver, Max Verstappen, who was in the local area for the British Grand Prix that weekend.

The children explored the exterior of the Boeing plane, with me taking photographs of them sitting in the giant engines, and listened to information from the local Airport manager. Soon after it was time to leave the venue, so we all walked down to our collection point ready to be chauffeured back to school after a very busy, and successful trip.

Check out the gallery HERE!