Year 9 Students take part in GCHQ National Language Competition

This week, eight of our Year 9 students are taking part in the GCHQ National Language Competition, a virtual challenge for teams of 13–14-year-olds from across the UK. The competition started on Monday and runs all week, and pupils have been continuing the challenge at home, working hard to solve a wide range of language-based puzzles and earn points for their teams.

As of Wednesday night, one of our teams was placed around 166th in the country and about 30th in the region, while the other team was around 600th nationally, an impressive achievement given the thousands of entries taking part across the UK. The leader board has now been removed until the competition ends on Friday evening, and final results will be announced next week.

The competition is designed to spark a love of languages. No prior language experience is required and many challenges feature rare or even entirely invented languages, making the experience fun, accessible, and engaging for everyone.

Well done to our Year 9 teams for their commitment and enthusiasm. We look forward to hearing the final results and we wish both teams the very best of luck!