Students in Years 9 to 12 studying computer science subjects have recently competed in a nationwide competition focusing on coding and programming. The National Computer Science School (NCSS) Challenge is open to all schools in Australia and has events for newbies (no experience), beginners, intermediate and advanced programmers. Students used the programming language Python to solve a series of real-world challenges, introducing concepts such as fundamental computational thinking and data structuring.
The aim of the NCSS Challenge is to be a competition for all abilities. That means students who’ve never coded as well as those with years of experience. To make sure everyone can be included, the organisers (Grok Learning) teach the coding skills as they go along. Each week they release new notes and problems; the notes teach new coding concepts, and the problems challenge them. The content is also aligned with the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies for Years 5-10. Plus, when you’re coding in the Challenge you won’t just learn about coding — they’ve included some science, language, maths, history and geography too.
Fortunately, with the current uncertainty of COVID-19, the competition was able to be undertaken remotely and completely online with participants receiving self-paced support from teachers and tutors.
All of our students received impressive results with the following reaching the top three levels of placement.
Adam Kowalik (Year 10)
Hayley McDermott (Year 10)
Lewis Cuckson (Year 10)
Joshua Blue (Year 12)
Lachlan Nguyen (Year 12)
Benoy Drenzla (Year 9)
David Jin (Year 9)
Orion Thompson (Year 9)
Connor Bowyer (Year 9)
Tom Prickett (Year 9)
Matthew Piri (Year 9)
Hawke Finnegan (Year 9)
Yuriya Sakamoto (Year 12)
Here are some examples of the students programming work.
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