Verglas, the Northern Irish EdTech start-up founded by a group of 17–18-year-olds, has announced the launch of IglooCode 2024 in partnership with Liberty IT and Kainos.

IglooCode is a capture-the-flag style programming and cryptography competition for Year 8 to 10 pupils from Northern Ireland, aimed at those looking to study IT, Digital Technology, or another similar subject at GCSE. This unique competition was run for the first time in 2023, welcoming over 100 pupils from 16 schools and receiving much positive feedback from local teachers.

Students are split into teams of four and log in to the online IglooCode platform. They are presented with a list of 500+ programming tasks to complete across categories such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, C#, Scratch, and BBC Micro:bit. Over a period of two hours, students race to complete as many tasks as they can from the category of their choice, battling against other schools for the top prize of an Arduino Starter Kit each.

Teachers of KS3 ICT across Northern Ireland can now submit their application to take part in the competition on the IglooCode website. Applications are open until 24th November.

Verglas are also offering volunteering positions to sixth-form students who may be interested in helping out at the event, which will be held in early-to-late March 2024 at Queen’s University Belfast. Applications for these positions are also open now, until 21st December.

Samuel Bhuiyan, past volunteer, said, “IglooCode was a fantastic learning experience for me that allowed me to develop my programming, social, and networking skills all in one. Despite volunteering more than half a year ago, some of the people I worked with there I'm still working with today as a degree apprentice at Kainos.”

“If it weren’t for that initial experience at IglooCode, I'm not sure I would have had the confidence to make it this far, so I am eternally grateful for it. From talking to the kids both during the event and after it, I can tell it was a great learning opportunity for everyone involved.”

Schools across Northern Ireland are invited to apply as soon as possible to be in for the chance to show off their programming skills and become the Royal Belfast Academical Institution’s successors to win IglooCode 2024.

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For more information on this topic, please contact Daniel Adams, Lead Event Coordinator for IglooCode, at dana@verglas.io, or leave a message at +44 (0) 7466 023922 for a call back.