Horsham's Pennthorpe finishes as leading British school in international coding competition

Fourteen Year 5 Pennthorpe students recently participated in a 20-level competition using the Codementum coding programme.

The Codementum platform encourages children to learn about Computer Science concepts such as variables, loops and functions, and teaches them how to write real code.

The competition challenged the children’s abilities to problem-solve and think strategically and as the competition levels progressed, the complexity of the coding increased.

Head of Digital Learning, Mrs Sian Kerr, said: “With a strong focus on nurturing each child’s problem solving skillset, computer programming enables our children to think logically, with creativity, through writing real code. Codementum’s platform enables our children from age 9 upwards to programme in both Python and Javascript.

“Coding is a significant part of our technology framework here at Pennthorpe. The children genuinely relished the opportunity to participate in this competition and we are all thrilled with the result. Their success is a distinct reflection on their commitment to learning the coding skillset and the fun they have whilst doing it!”.Overall, 5,000 sessions were successfully completed, as part of this competition, by an enormous 2,129 schools, who joined from 133 countries, resulting in a staggering 13,957,392 lines of code written. The Codementum competition is open to all registered schools.