Benjamin was invited to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford on Sunday 8 February as a finalist in a UK-wide competition – The UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge.

Reaching the final of the Elite (16–18) age group is an impressive achievement, as 7,085 students entered the first round for this age group. Benjamin was among the top 52 highest achieving students invited to the final round in his age group, and was presented with his finalist’s certificate at a prize-giving ceremony at Hertford College.

The UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, 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 to 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, Seniors, Intermediate, and Juniors) were then invited to the Department of Computer Science at Oxford for the finals over two weekends in January and February.

Ben is pictured here with his sister, Rebekah, who is a pupil at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School.