News

Highfield Students Crowned East of England Champions in CyberFirst Girls Competition

In February, Highfield School students Susannah, Isabella, Harriette and Freya attended the regional final of the CyberFirst Girl's competition in Ipswich.  The students had qualified for the event following a series of online challenges - 600 schools and over 8,500 girls across the UK took part.  On the day of the final, the students competed with other schools from across the East of England in a series of problem-solving, logical thinking, coding and encryption challenges.  The competition was fierce, but the students were victorious and were awarded East of England champions of CyberFirst Girl's competition 2023. 

On Saturday 11^th March the students were invited to attend the CyberFirst Girls Awards Evening at the Titanic Hotel in Belfast.  During the day the girls visited the Titanic Museum and took part in a number of challenges including an escape room, a virtual reality task and an encryption problem involving locked safes.  Several members of the National Cyber Security Centre, including the Chief Executive Officer, Lindy Cameron, were present at the awards and gave inspirational speeches.  Special guest speaker was actor Hannah Khalique-Brown, who has recently appeared as a cybersecurity analyst in the Channel 4 thriller ‘The Undeclared War’.

Mr Holmes, Head of Computer Science commented, “I’m incredibly proud of the students, they have devoted a huge amount of time both in the initial qualifiers and in the final. It was wonderful for the students to attend the Awards evening and be recognised for their work.”