Teams of Year 7-11 students battle it out to win the pride of place inscription on our Braben competition cup. We want to make it as easy as possible for your school to take part : a supervising teacher needs to register to invigilate on your school site…they can hold it any date/time in the competition fortnight for each of the two rounds and do not require any expertise in order to do so.

2020 Competition News:

Round 1 competition window: Mon 27th Jan 2020 –  Fri 7th Feb 2020
Round 2 competition window: Mon 16th Mar 2020 –  Fri 27th Mar 2020

2019 Competition News: a huge well done to the 254 teams that made it into the second (& final) round of the PCTC 2019 competition. Teachers have been issued with results & certificates now: a particular well-done to schools featuring in the top ten teams including The Perse School (1st & 3rd), The Downs School (2nd), Pocklington School, UCS, Magdalen College School and St Olave’s Grammar School. Do join us again for 2020; the papers from this year are on the practice area now.

2019 Competition News: congratulations to the approximately 2500 students in round 1 and over 600 students who made it into round 2 this year. It was a fantastic competition and incredibly tightly fought at the top. Well done to all and we hope to see you back for 2020.

Format:

Students submit short code  solutions to a range of challenges which increase in difficulty across the two rounds and during a timed contest:

Round 1: 40 minutes, sat in pairs sharing 1 computer
Round 2: 60 minutes, sat in threes with 1 computer each

International schools may enter the competition for the purpose of certificate awards but only schools located in the UK will be eligible for the cup/prize money award.

Find out more in the competition overview, take a look at the practice material available or head straight for the registration form!