The biggest school quiz in the Channel Islands returned in November with St John’s School and Samerés Primary School taking home the year 6 first prizes and Victoria College, St Michael’s Preparatory School and La Mare De Carteret High School winning first place in the year 8 challenges.
The De Putron Challenge is supported by the Ana Leaf Foundation and is an annual inter-school quiz which has seen continued growth since the first challenge in 2007, with 38 schools taking part in this year’s event. The challenge celebrates the brightest young minds in Jersey and Guernsey and this year there was a new format due to the uncertainty caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The challenge was for year 6 and 8 students and took place over the course of three weeks. Three challenges were set, with each taking around one hour to complete. Students had five days to complete each challenge with their classmates, in smaller teams or individually.
The theme of the event was “Dear Future” and each of the challenges included elements to fit with the theme such as raising awareness of issues that will affect the students’ future and inspiring them to make a difference.
The Power of Knowledge challenge was launched on Monday 16 November and students were tested on their geography, science and environment knowledge using the online quizzing platform Kahoot. There were 10 multiple choice questions on each topic and each of the rounds featured a video question. The teams were scored on accuracy as well as how quickly they answered the questions.
St John’s School (Jersey) won first place, Trinity School (Jersey) came in at second place and Melrose (Guernsey) was third for year 6. In Year 8, first place was Victoria College (Jersey), in second place Les Quennevais School (Jersey) and La Mare de Carteret High School (Guernsey) came third.
The second challenge, which launched on Monday 23 November, was The Rise of the Robots. Using Gamefroot, teams explored how popular mini-game Bloons Tower Defense was made and had a go at coding their own game. Colin King from Jersey Coders designed the challenge and judged the entries. Students were judged on how much progress they made, the quality of the game, how optimised the code was, good maths and problem-solving skills and how well they understood the algorithm. Extra points were achieved if the teams customised the code and if they wrote a short description on how the code could be applied to the real world.
St. John’s School (Jersey) won first place, Amherst Primary School (Guernsey) came in second place and Jersey College Prep (Jersey) were third for year 6. In Year 8, first place was St. Michael’s Preparatory (Jersey), in second place Les Beaucamps High School (Guernsey) and Blanchelande College (Guernsey) came third.
The year 8 De Putron Challenge team from St Michael’s Preparatory School said: “We most enjoyed the coding round as we loved making the game with the team and it was really fun to work together. We won the coding challenge; we had to code a game and think of an idea on how this code could be used in real life. Our idea was to use a 360 camera to track animal activity to help save endangered species. We are going to celebrate by eating cake and we are going to use the money we have won for our school to start a coding club.”
The final challenge was Reinventing the Wheel and was launched on 30 November. Referencing one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, students identified an issue that is affecting or could affect the Channel Islands. Teams created a presentation to pitch an idea that could help solve this issue. The judges were Gary Burgess, ITV journalist and Lucy Kirby, director of the Digital Greenhouse in Guernsey. Students were marked on the structure of the pitch, the quality of the product and its benefits and the level of innovation and ingenuity.
Samarés Primary School (Jersey) won first place, Les Hautes Capelles Primary (Guernsey) came in at second place and Blanchelande College (Guernsey) were third for year 6. In Year 8, first place was La Mare de Carteret High School (Guernsey), in second place Les Beaucamps High School (Guernsey) and Les Quennevais School (Jersey) came third.
The winners and runners up will receive a cash prize for the second and third challenges. Schools that took part in all three challenges will be awarded a book voucher.
Hayley de Putron, a trustee of the Ana Leaf Foundation and founder of the De Putron Challenge, said: “We’re so pleased with the success of this year’s De Putron Challenge. We wanted to continue with the event despite the challenging year we’ve all faced and making the challenge virtual meant more students could take part, it offered more flexibility to the schools and if schools had to close due to the virus, they could still complete the challenges. Even though we couldn’t meet together physically this year, it was great to see the photos and videos of the schools taking part.
“We received really positive feedback from the schools, and many said their students enjoyed the challenges. It’s so important to celebrate young people’s intelligence and we’re so grateful we could go ahead with the challenge this year, even if it was in a different format.”
For more information and updates on the De Putron Challenge, click here.
