The winners of the island’s first national coding competition have been announced.

CedarBridge Academy pupil Bishop Zanders won the secondary school category after he used computer code Python to programme an answer to a given scenario.

Saltus pupil Hudson Mello came top in the middle school category for his use of computer languages HTML and CSS on his website.

Bermuda High School’s Eloise Tamine won the primary school category for an interactive game created with programming language Scratch.

The competition also attracted entries from China and Brazil — with the Bermuda entrants notching up top places.

Bishop and Hudson placed top in their categories internationally while Eloise came second to an entry from Brazil.

Hudson said: “I have been working on website design at Saltus and home and I thought this would be a good way to develop my skills and compete against others in Bermuda and on an international basis.

“It encourages you to develop your skills in the area of computer science in a competitive way. It exposes students in Bermuda to the many different opportunities in the field of computer science for further education and careers.”

The awards ceremony was held at BHS earlier this month.

Event director and head of ICT/Computer Science at the school Darren Burchall launched the BHS National Coding Competition which is the first of its kind in Bermuda.

It is part of a partnership between the school and his company Great4Learning designed to bridge the gap between public and private school education in computer sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning.

Mr Burchall told the winners that Artificial Intelligence would create jobs that will need young people with the skills they had shown.

He added: “In the future you will be competing against children from around the world for jobs that have not even been identified yet.”

Computer science teacher at CedarBridge Duval Robinson said Bishop had a keen interest in computers, as well as attention to detail and efficiency.

Mr Robinson said: “He possesses good analytical skill in his effort to problem solve.

“When given a coding task he would ponder on the possible solutions during the day and return the next day with following up questions, ideas and suggestions as it relates to the task given.

“He can programme in multiple languages such as Scratch, Python, JavaScript. He has done all the offered computer science courses at CedarBridge Academy and has a strong career interest in the field of computer science, especially that of coding.

BHS head of school Linda Parker added: “We are very happy that you took part in the BHS National coding competition because coding is indeed a skill that is needed and employers around the world are looking for young people.”

Mr Burchall said that plans for next year’s competition are already under way and the future of the competition will involve children coming to Bermuda to compete in a weeklong event.