Collyer’s students compute at informatics Olympiad

The talented programmers took part in the first round of the competition, and tackled a range of challenging problems against the clock, involving developing a programme and reading a programming language of their choice.

The tasks were eagerly undertaken by some of Collyer’s best computing students, with all of them doing well in a number of rigorous challenges. Students Oliver Faircliff, Emily Farr and Nikita Karandejs gave particularly outstanding performances, with their scores in the Olympiad placing them in the top 3 of the overall college results.

Emily Farr, 16 and a first year Computing student, said of the Olympiad: ‘It was a very hard paper, so I am proud of my results. I really enjoy computing as a subject, and I am now able to use programming language successfully, which is a great achievement for me!’

Diane Dowling, Subject Leader for Computer Science at Collyer’s, was delighted with the students’ performance: “The Informatics Olympiad is a very challenging paper, aimed at the high level computing students. Everyone who participated did very well indeed.”

Diane was particularly proud of Emily Farr, who achieved the joint top mark of the Collyer’s team, an incredible achievement given that she only started the subject last September!

Diane said: “Emily has done brilliantly in such a short space of time and I’m hoping that more girls will choose to study Computer Science in the future, as it is a challenging subject, but one that is highly satisfying. A degree in Computer Science could definitely open the door to a well-paid and interesting career. The digital economy continues to grow rapidly and there is no shortage of high quality jobs”.

Collyer’s Principal, Dr Jackie Johnston, added: “Well done to Diane and these talented students for working so hard to be competitive on the national stage. They are a credit to Collyer’s.”

Report and pictures contributed by Alex White, Collyer’s student reporter.