Student Kairo Morton will be studying computer science in Britain after winning a two-week scholarship to Oxford Royale’s Summer School.

Kairo, a 13-year-old Somersfield Academy pupil, was chosen from a “very strong” pool of Bermudians aged 11 to 15 who applied for a full scholarship to the prestigious summer school.

As the island’s sole recipient, he will study computer science from July 30 to August 12 with other young people from across the globe. At first I was actually kind of reluctant to apply because I’d just applied to boarding schools, and I had not got accepted to any of my boarding schools. I’d got on the wait-list to all the schools I’d applied to,” said Kairo. He eventually applied for the UK programme after prompting from his mother, and submitted an essay on what education meant to him. Three to four days later, he got an e-mail saying he’d been accepted.

“I was in the middle of class and I shouted out, screaming,” he said with a smile.

Oxford Summer School offers in-depth courses covering subjects like maths, law, sciences, and arts.

The programme takes place between June and August, and each two-week course block includes morning and afternoon lessons followed by leisure trips in the evening. Kairo hopes to choose courses that focus on developing android apps.

“They have IOS development, web development, game development, but I really want to focus on android apps because I’m used to programming things that relate to that.”

Kairo first got interested in computer sciences after he moved to Somersfield from West Pembroke Primary School. Innovation classes had him working with robotics, and although he worked with the construction aspect, it was the programming he fell in love with. “I started with robotics and I branched off on my own to learning website programming — HTML, JavaScript programming, things like that — and now I just do programming on my own, so it just evolved from there.”

After his time at Somersfield, Kairo plans to complete his high school years in boarding school before studying software development and engineering at [MIT] or Carnegie Mellon University. Until then, the Pembroke-born student spends his time playing tennis and enjoying his classes in maths and science. “I just love a challenge. I’ve always liked challenges, especially in maths and science, so I feel it’s the challenge to do more and to get better at everything you do that drives me.”

He encourages other young people to follow their passion, keep challenging themselves, and to never settle for less.

“Always try and reach for your potential and anything will be possible.”