St Mary's Junior School students amongst the best in the Bebras Coding Challenge 2025

Following the outstanding successes of our girls in Years 2-6 in the ‘Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge 2024’ in November, sixteen of our Year 5 and 6 girls (who achieved scores in the top 10% nationally) participated in the inaugural online ‘Bebras Coding Challenge 2025’. This is an invitation-only challenge for talented UK students to produce fully programmed solutions to coding problems within strict time constraints.  

The Challenge took place in March, and we waited with bated breath for the official results. Nationally, 49,774 students participated in the ‘Novices’ category and 10,765 students participated in the ‘Explorers’ category.  

We are delighted to announce that eight of our Year 5 girls and four of our Year 6 girls have been presented with a ‘Distinction Award’.  This was an extremely impressive achievement within the context that there is no upper age limit for these categories (and therefore the potential to be competing against much older students), and between 3% and 6% of entrants across the country in these age categories score zero points, in what are extremely difficult challenges.  

Our girls’ marvellous achievements were as follows:

In addition, Isla H. and Tintin G. were awarded ‘Gold Awards’, putting them in the top 10% of entrants nationally.  We are also thrilled that one of our girls achieved the exceptional score of 100% in the Novices category which is, by definition, the joint highest score in the whole country!

We are similarly delighted with our girls' overall performance compared to County and National Results:

Novices (Year 5)

Explorers (Year 6)

Once again, the girls have demonstrated their resilience, perseverance, and enthusiasm by competing under pressure at the highest level.  All of their hard work during the preparations for the competition really did pay off and they should be extremely proud of what they have achieved.