Year 9 to take part in GCHQ challenge

Only 10 per cent of the global cyber workforce are female (Whole School - 08/02/2017)

Girls at Nottingham Free School are getting a taste of what it would be like to be a part of the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). They will be taking part in the CyberFirst Girls Competition, an event aimed at encouraging young girls to consider a career in cyber security.

The competition is open to teams of four, aged 13-15, and will take place in two parts. The first part will be online, where they will need to take part in a set of online challenges covering four main cyber security topics.

If they make it through as one of the top ten teams they will then get the opportunity to compete in the grand final in London on 27th March. There they will compete against each other to investigate suspicious cyber activity, present their findings and solve who’s behind the crime.

Nottingham Free School are very excited to be a part of the competition. A student brought it to Mrs Brown’s attention as something that she thought would be good to take part in, following the success of the Eastern STEM challenge.

This is just a small part of the employability drive at the school, helping students with key skills that will enable them to secure the job they desire when they leave education, whilst also introducing careers that they may not have previously considered.

Head of School, Jenny Brown said:

“This is all about giving students full access to lots of different types of careers available. It’s important that no one feels up against any barriers to careers where their gender may be under-represented. There’s no reason why girls shouldn’t be working in these fields and events like the GCHQ competition gives them a taste of a career path that they could pursue. As a school we want to be able to give students as many different opportunities as possible.”

Nottingham Free School has had lots of enthusiastic year 9 girls volunteer to take part in the competition and they are looking forward to getting started later in the month.