Riverina Inter-School Programming Championships commence as region's student get coding

The program is held in partnership with Charles Sturt University and The Riverina Anglican College (TRAC), incorporating science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills.

TRAC STEM teacher Isaac Mannion said he and his three student teams were excited to get started and put their many hours of practise to the test.

"It's a competition for high school students to challenge themselves and we've spent the last five weeks training and preparing for this so hopefully today all their hard work pays off," he said.

"Our kids have been really enthusiastic, we've been meeting every week and spending a couple of hours each week preparing."

Mr Mannion said the questions put to the teams of two or three students were logic-based and required them to think outside the box to find a solution.

"We've had a mixed bag of students, some have come from no coding experience at all while others have done a little bit before," he said.

"The kids are really engaged though and keen to keep carrying on what they've learnt after today."

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One of the students from TRAC, Isabel Brown of year 9, said she was confident in their chances of success.

"As a school I think we can do really well, but there is still that little bit of competition between even our three teams," she said.

"We've been practicing for about two terms so we really hope it pays off."

Another TRAC student in year 10, Mina Girgis, shared Miss Brown's confidence and said it was a great opportunity to broaden their skills.

"Overall, we have had both teams doing really well in the practice rounds and we have an idea of how the system will work," he said.

"It's very encouraging to have help throughout the whole process.

"There's always a lot to learn in programming, you can never be the best at it because there is always new things to discover, so we are always trying to improve and events like this really help."

Year 9 student Tayarni Woods was representing the third TRAC team, and said she did not have a lot of prior experience but was excited to learn.

"My team is a little newer, we've only been practicing for a term, but there's a lot of help from all the teachers so we can experience it too," she said.

CSU AgriTech Incubator project officer Siobhain Howard said regardless of the outcome, the learning experience was valuable to students.

"STEM and digital literacy skills are so important, not only for now but for jobs of the future, so we hope that the program will build aspiration for students to continue to develop their skills in this area as nearly every occupation involves some interaction with digital technology," she said.

Support for the event branched further than the classrooms with Councillor Vanessa Keenan in attendance to watch the young minds be put to the test.

"This is the core of future generations that are being exposed to the talent that we have here at the university and driven by their teachers so it's a wonderful opportunity for them," she said.

"The more diversity of opportunities we have on offer here for young people is so important - not everyone is into sports, not everyone is into art, not everyone is into coding, but some people are into all or some of these things so the fact we can provide such opportunities here in Wagga is fantastic."