Burnside High School sent eleven teams to the Canterbury Schools Programming Contest, held at the University of Canterbury in early June. The competition saw around eighty students participating from ten different schools across Canterbury.
For anyone who has never heard of this type of competition before, the teams are given three hours to write coding solutions to increasingly complex problems with points awarded for speed and accuracy. This year, the most challenging problems were written by UC’s own Dr Henry Hickman and proved to be extremely challenging.
Burnside achieved impressive results, with Elizabeth Watts and Ava Heath Williams placing 4th and 7th, both earning 121 points. Burnside’s top Year 12 team, composed of Matthew Thomas, Benjamin Wray, and Ben Gorman, finished 3rd overall—just a few penalty points behind Lincoln High’s 2nd-place team.
The winners were Burnside’s own “Timmy’s Shoemakers”. This team consisted of Year 13 students Aditya Bansal, Ron Livne and Cameron Martin who excelled under pressure and took home the trophy in what was arguably the toughest Canterbury School’s Programming Contest that we have seen in several years.
Congratulations to all the participants and a special note of thanks to teacher Steve Rodkiss who helps organise this event for Canterbury students. We look forward to continuing Burnside High Schools success in this field in the future.
