Talented pupil Oliver, was invited to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford on Saturday 25 January as a finalist in a UK-wide competition – the UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge.

Reaching the final of the Juniors 10-12 age group is an impressive achievement, as 79,986 pupils entered the first round for this age group. Oliver was among the top 61 highest achieving pupils invited to the final round in his age group, and he was presented with his finalist’s certificate at a prize-giving ceremony at Hertford College.

The UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is designed to get pupils excited about computing and computational thinking. It is a problem-solving contest with questions inspired by topics in Computer Science. In the first round, held in their own schools, pupils have to try and solve as many problems as possible in the allotted time. There are six age categories. The highest scoring pupils from the four oldest age groups (Elite, Seniors, Intermediate, and Juniors) were then invited to the Department of Computer Science at Oxford for the finals over two weekends in February.