Scots pupils win coding world first at 4 X 4 finals in Abu Dhabi 

A team of Scottish schoolchildren has won an inaugural coding world champions’ trophy. Sponsorship from Brightwork, the Glasgow and Edinburgh based recruitment company, provided the Woodfarm High School pupils with an opportunity to compete in the Jaguar Land Rover 4×4 Challenge at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

‘Team Docs’, joined more than 150 young people at the world-famous F1 Circuit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital for the competition. There, they took home the Coding Challenge Award, and were shortlisted for the Innovative Thinking Trophy.

Suzanne Mowat, 15, led the team which consisted of Rory Graham, 16, Jake Gibson, 15, Danial Tariq, 16, Rowan Roscher, 15, and Lewis Griffin, 14, The team programmed miniature remote-controlled four-wheel-drive vehicles they had designed and built for the competition, all in their lunch hours and after school.

Shan Saba, Brightwork’s director, added: “When we offered to sponsor the Woodfarm High School team, we wanted to encourage the uptake of science, technology, engineering, and Mathematics in schools.

“We are hugely impressed by the incredible performance of these young people, on the world stage. That they’ve won the first Coding Champions prize in the world is a stellar achievement, and we couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Dr Simon Hadfield, Principal Teacher of Science at Woodfarm High School, added: “We were the only school in Scotland which competed in the JLR 4×4 Challenge, and I’m very proud of Suzanne, Jake, Rowan, Lewis, Rory and Danial. They are a credit to the school, to Scotland’s standing in the world, and to the future of STEM education in the UK.”

The overall competition was won by the K-Evo team from Portugal, with second place taken by the Panthera team from Malaysia, and the bronze going to Fair Dinkum 4×4, from Australia. The competition finalists were from 16 countries, with 4 from the UK, but ‘Team Docs’ was the only Scottish team to make it to the global stages in the UAE.