PA Consulting invites schools and colleges to their coding competition in support of National Coding Week. The week is dedicated to promoting coding and digital literacy in schools.
This year’s theme will challenge students between the ages of 8 and 18 to ‘innovate to accelerate energy transition’ and come up with an innovation that could help to either reverse the effects of climate change or respond to the challenge of providing affordable energy.
PA first launched the competition in 2012 in response to a fall in programming skills, to help tackle the growing talent gap in programming and coding. The Raspberry Pi was selected as it is a low-cost computer, launched with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools and stimulating interest in the IT industry.
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Teams compete across four categories based on their academic years: years 4-6, years 7-9, years 10-11 and years 12-13. Three finalists from each category are invited to the PA Raspberry Pi Awards Day event in London in spring 2023. A panel of expert judges will select a winner from each of the four categories, who will be awarded with £1,000 for their school or college.
Frazer Bennett, Chief Innovation Officer at PA Consulting, said: “With the world’s attention on the current energy crisis and with access to resources declining and costs rising, this is a fitting time for students to explore a solution to these issues – an issue that teachers, students, and our partners from leading industry organisations selected when we asked them for their ideas for this year’s theme."
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He continued: “We think that the ingenuity of children is astounding, and they have a knack of coming up with new ideas none of us would have thought of. Through this competition we seek to enhance and promote STEM education combined with innovation and ingenuity and it genuinely excites us to see what clever solutions the teams come up with, to tackle these big challenges head on.”
To support the teachers and teams during the competition, PA has put in place a comprehensive set of free resources, which includes webinars, interactive support sessions and starter kits for teams.
To enter the competition, click here.
Source: Written from press release
