Cyber First Winners

Saint Catherine’s College Cyberfirst Team Scoop Top Awards at Gala Event in Glasgow

Pictured L-R Cara Murphy, Lucie McParland,  Cadhla Morgan and Niamh Courtney

The Saint Catherine’s College Year 9 CyberFirst team have had a busy and successful year. After competing against 500 schools across the UK they were invited to attend the UK Gala Event in Glasgow in March. And what a successful event it was for this team of tenacious young cyber specialists, winning a staggering raft of awards, including: Highest Scoring Returning Team, Highest Collective Score for a CyberFirst School, Top School in NI and School with the most team entries.

The team were awarded trophies, tech goodies, laptops and £2,500 in prize money! Additionally, they were crowned Northern Ireland Regional CyberFirst Champions and congratulated by members from the UK and Scottish Government for leading the way in Cyber Security and Cyber Education. What an achievement for these talented students and their Cyberfirst Mentor, Head of Digital Technology, Mr John Mulgrew. Mr Mulgrew praised the stirling work of the girls:

‘I am incredibly proud of our pupils and their achievements in the CyberFirst Girls Competition. Becoming Northern Ireland Regional Champions for three consecutive years is a fantastic accomplishment and reflects their hard work, teamwork and problem-solving skills. Attending the UK Gala events, most recently in Glasgow, has been a brilliant experience, giving our girls the chance to take part in coding challenges, explore STEM opportunities and meet other Top Teams from across the UK. Their success as the Top-Scoring CyberFirst school and Top-Scoring returning school, highlight the strong culture of ambition within our school community. This experience has inspired many of our pupils to pursue further opportunities in technology and cybersecurity and we are excited to see what they achieve next.’

St Catherine’s have also this year been awarded Cyberfirst Gold Status by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). This is the highest level of recognition in the CyberFirst Schools/Colleges Programme and places St Catherine’s College amongst very few schools in Northern Ireland to achieve Gold Status.