Year 6 Code Their Way To Success And Buried Treasure

On Tuesday 17th March, six of our Year 6 girls took part in the Micro:bit Coding Challenge at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

Organised by the Rotary Club of Cambridge, the event brought together pupils from across Cambridgeshire for a day of creativity, teamwork and problem-solving.

The challenge required teams to program a micro:bit (a tiny pocket-sized computer) to control a robot buggy. The scenario was imaginative and demanding: each team’s buggy had been shipwrecked on a deserted and hostile tropical island. With the treasure map lost in the wreck, the girls had to write code that would enable their buggy to search for buried treasure without falling into the sea or crashing into palm trees.

The task was made even more difficult by the fact that the final island layout was only revealed after the coding had been completed, meaning each buggy had to operate fully autonomously. Using built-in line and obstacle sensors, the girls programmed their robot via a Raspberry Pi before transferring their code to a micro:bit slotted into the buggy. A second micro:bit was used as a Bluetooth controller to launch the robot, which also had to play a ‘happy tune’ each time it successfully found and collected treasure.

Fourteen teams from across the county competed in the challenge. We are incredibly proud of our team, Isla H., Mati B., Emo Z., Athena A., Mia K. and Emily J., whose buggy collected an impressive thirteen pieces of treasure within the four-minute time limit. Their outstanding performance earned them third place overall, just five points behind the winners.

The girls were highly praised by the organisers for their determination, perseverance, teamwork, positive attitude and enthusiasm throughout the day.

St Mary's girls approach Computer Science with confidence and curiosity, developing coding skills from an early age which become as natural and familiar to them as reading.

This way to the photos

March 2026