Students from across the North East came together for the annual Coderunners Coding Challenge, hosted at Newcastle Sixth Form College on the 25th April. The challenge involved teams of three students taking part in a series of coding tasks, with a 3-hour challenge to complete as many tasks as possible. The competition is simple and the winning team is the group who completed the most challenges in the given timescale. That is where the simplicity ended. The tasks are designed specifically to test the skills of the coders, with some really difficult activities.
Newcastle Sixth Form College designed and developed the competition as a means of encouraging schools from across the region to send their very best students for a one day competition, with prizes and certificates offered to the winning teams in two competitions, for under 16’s and over 16 age groups.
There were 10 teams competing for the challenge in the morning session, with the eventual winners coming from Framwellgate School Durham.
Alan Wareham, Computer Science teacher at Newcastle Sixth Form College commented: ‘The event was a real showcase of the talented young coders who are based all across the region. We were extremely proud to host the event this year, and with schools from Durham, Newcastle and Washington taking part, we had some great representation from schools who are really engaged with developing computer science skills. Our students worked really hard in the morning to assist in the under 16’s competition, and worked even harder in their own competition in the afternoon, becoming the overall winners of the over 16’s challenge.’
