St John’s Year 11 student Ross Beesley was invited to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford on Sunday 3 February as a finalist in the UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge.
In order to reach the final of this UK national competition, Ross was ranked as being in top sixty highest achieving students in his age group – 14-16. This was an impressive achievement considering 19,542 students entered the first round.
The UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, supported by Google, is designed to get students 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, students have to try and solve as many problems as possible in the allotted time. There are six age categories. The highest scoring students from the four oldest age groups – Elite, Senior, Intermediate, and Junior – were then invited to the Department of Computer Science at Oxford for the finals held over two weekends in February.
Peter Millican, Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, University of Oxford presented Ross with his finalist’s certificate at a prize-giving ceremony.