Concord F5 (y11) student Hanks took a break from his GCSE revision recently to represent the UK at the Western European Informatics Olympiad. Hanks was selected as part of a team of six school students – the competition is open to students up to the end of sixth-form - from the UK to travel to Eindhoven in the Netherlands for the three-day competition. The contest itself was a four-hour four-problem competition and competitors had to work within virtual machines installed on computers which provide an integrated development environment (IDE) and a set range of apps to develop their solutions. They could then submit programs that would solve particular sub-tasks, and ultimately solve the set problems, to a website platform that checked whether their solution worked. Hanks enjoyed solving the problems: “They were interesting an problem set this year, very well balanced in difficulty, with the third being the hardest. I performed better than I thought and managed to AC three problems (AC means to solve a problem), and my teammates also performed quite well” Hanks was delighted to win a Gold medal, placing 5^th overall. Not only was Hanks a medal winner, but he really enjoyed the experience: “It was a fun trip, I learnt some new knowledge from the first lecture and also from a Phillips museum that we visited there, and the contest was fun and it was enjoyable socialising with others and looking at other countries”