Year 6 Celebrates Women in Stem
Just before half term, all of our Year 6 girls visited the Centre for Computing History here in Cambridge to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day’. This is an international celebration of the achievements of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and is held every year on the second Tuesday of October.
Founded in 2009 by Suw Charman-Anderson to counter the invisibility of women in tech, the day aims to raise the profile of women in STEM, create new role models who will inspire more girls to pursue careers in these fields, and also support women already working in STEM.
During the visit they participated in a series of practical activities including:
Learning how to program 45-year-old BBC Micro computers using the text-based BBC Basic coding language.
Discussing the evolution of computers and their uses throughout history.
Examining an original Elliott 903 computer from 1967.
Learning about local computer scientist Sophie Wilson and the work she and her team undertook in Cambridge to develop the microchip that forms the ‘brain’ of many of the devices that we use today.
Exploring the development of computer games by gaining hands-on experience with a variety of historic computers and their original software.
Using Morse Code transmitters and receivers to send coded messages to each other.
The staff at the centre were extremely impressed with the girls, not only in terms of their Computer Science skills, but also with their interest in the development of computing and the historical figures who pioneered it, and their intelligent questions and observations throughout the visit.
All of the girls had a thoroughly enjoyable experience and now have a much greater understanding of the parts that they may be able to play in the next phase of developments within the computing and technology industries, by following in the footsteps of the pioneering women who have already been so instrumental in this field.
Did you know: St Mary's was delighted to win the Cambridge Independent STEM Initiative of the Year 2026. This summer, 35% of our Upper Sixth went on to study STEM-related subjects at university.
October 2026