One brilliant team secured a top 10% finish in the GCHQ-run challenge

Students at BACA are celebrating this week, after some brilliant success in a nationwide language competition, organised by the super sleuths at the UK’s intelligence and cyber agency.

Now in its third year, the prestigious National Language Competition, run by GCHQ, sees Year 9 students across the UK taking part in a week-long series of virtual language-themed challenges.

This year, between 18-22 November, teams of four from schools all over the country collected points as they tackled a series of fun and immersive puzzles and challenges, using languages to help solve them, and hopefully inspiring pupils to continue with their language learning at GCSE and beyond.

This year’s competition saw more than 350 schools get involved, with over 2000 teams entering in total.

Brighton Aldridge Community Academy was the only participating school in the Brighton and Hove area this year, so the pressure was on for the school to represent Brighton well! A total of 12 teams from BACA entered the competition, with 35 Year 9 (13 and 14 year old) students representing the school and led by BACA’s Head of Modern Foreign Languages, Ms Williams.

After five days of putting their language skills to the test, the BACA teams celebrated together with cupcakes – then it was a nervous, week-long wait for the results.  

Fantastically, every BACA team came in the top third of the rankings – with one team (code name Proud Kind Elk) even finishing in the top 10 per cent of schools! It’s a fantastic achievement for the students involved, and for all the staff in the language department at BACA.

Ms Williams, Head of Modern Foreign Languages at BACA, said:

“ I am so very proud to have seen our students all working hard together, collaborating with full commitment to collect as many points as possible for their respective teams and the school. It was truly moving and inspiring to watch them solving puzzles, breaking codes and coming up with  creative solutions to some really highly challenging questions. I hope it has really encouraged a passion for learning languages amongst our students, and shown them the many transferrable skills that learning a language can develop. Thank you GCHQ – we’ll be back next year!”