Computifuls are cyber savvy winners
A QUARTET of Piggott School pupils are to visit to Buckingham Palace after winning a national codebreaking challenge.
The group, called The Computifuls, were one of 10 teams aged 12-13 taking part in the 2018 CyberFirst Girls Competition. To win, their sleuthing skills and technological mettle were tested against a series of head-scratching challenges set by masterminds from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ.
Megan Pickup, Jess Peck, Zara Pristov-King and Callena Wylie, from the Twyford-based School, were judged the winners and will receive £1,000 towards their school’s IT equipment.
Each finalist took home individual prizes and will also meet the Duke of York at Buckingham Palace.
Jess said: “The competition was challenging, but we worked so hard as a team and it was fun. We did have moments when we went down in the leaderboard, but we regrouped, kept thinking and came back up.
“All the teams did amazingly, and it was scary when they were announcing the results and calling out the names – we were actually really shocked that we won.”
Pat Bhattacharya, Head of Computer Science at The Piggott School, said: “This has been a fantastic experience for the girls, especially because we at Piggott want to promote girls in computer science.
“Getting girls into technology has been one of our overarching objectives at the school and this has been a fantastic platform for that.”
Now in its second year, 4,500 girls entered this year’s competition.