Success in Bebras Computing Challenge for BIS HCMC

For the second consecutive year, the British International School Ho Chi Minh City entered the UK Bebras Computing Challenge. This is a competition that tests pupils’ problem solving and computational thinking skills, designed to get students all over the world excited about computing.

The Bebras challenges are made up of a set of short problems called Bebras tasks and are delivered online. The tasks are fun, engaging and based on problems that Computer Scientists often meet and enjoy solving. The tasks can be solved without prior knowledge but instead require logical thinking. The aim is to solve as many tasks as you can in the allotted time.

After a very successful first year, we wanted to go bigger and better, so we decided to run the competition in all Computing Key Stage 3 lessons (Years 7-9) along with KS4/5 Computer Science classes.

520 students took part, attempting to solve a series of puzzles and problems in just 45 minutes. The final results were extremely positive with BIS students achieving well above the world average with an incredible 103 students placing in the top 10% of the world! These students are now entered into the next round, which is run by Oxford University in March.

We saw some great individual success and the highest scoring students are as follows:

• Junior (Y7) - Isabella Dam
• Intermediate (Y8/9) - Yule Park
• Senior (KS4) - DongYoung Kim
• Elite (KS5) Dan Champion

Notably, Isabella in Year 7 achieved a first for BIS, with a perfect 200 out of 200 score. This not only secures her the 'Best in School' award but puts her in the top 20 individuals in the world! This score gained her a personal invite to a very special competition which is held at Oxford University in January 2020. Our congratulations go to Isabella on this wonderful achievement.

Dave Knaggs, Head of Computing