If your child loves computing but school only offers an hour or two a week, two competitions let them go further without any pressure. The Coding Challenge is the invitation-only follow-on to the Bebras puzzle challenge. The Perse Coding Team Challenge is a team event where pupils solve programming problems together. Both are open to KS3, both run through school, and both are effectively free.

Most parents I speak to have the same worry about coding competitions: that they are for children who have already been programming for years, ideally with an engineer parent at home who explains recursion over breakfast. That is not what these two are. They are built, quite deliberately, to catch children on the way up — including ones who have never written a line of code in their life. Here is how the ladder works, and where your KS3 child fits on it.

The gateway: Bebras first

Everything here starts with the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge. Bebras is a 45-minute online challenge of logic puzzles that your child sits at school in a two-week window each November. Crucially, it involves no coding at all — it tests the underlying thinking (spotting patterns, following rules, working things out step by step) that coding later depends on.

The KS3 age group is the "Intermediates" category, roughly Years 8 and 9. It is free, and the school runs it. If your child has never entered anything before, Bebras is the natural first step — low stakes, no preparation, and it doubles as a gentle test of whether they actually enjoy this kind of thinking.

That matters because Bebras is also the door to the next competition.

The Coding Challenge: from Blockly to Python

Roughly the top 10% of Bebras entrants are invited to The Coding Challenge (run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the University of Oxford, and previously known as the OUCC). It usually takes place in the third week of January, again in school, and lasts about 45 minutes.

The clever part is how it handles different ages and abilities. Younger and less experienced entrants — the Juniors and Intermediates — solve the problems using Blockly, a system where you drag and snap coloured blocks together to build a program visually, rather than typing out code. Older, more experienced entrants (Seniors and Elite) write in a text language such as Python.

So a Year 8 pupil who has never coded can still take part meaningfully: they reason their way through the problem and assemble the solution out of blocks. That is a genuine coding competition experience with the typing barrier removed. For a child who enjoyed Bebras, it is the perfect "what comes next".

The Perse Coding Team Challenge: coding as a team sport

The other route in is completely separate, and it does not depend on Bebras at all. The Perse Coding Team Challenge (PCTC), run by The Perse School in Cambridge, is open to Year 11 and younger — which very much includes KS3 pupils.

It comes in two stages:

  • Round 1 is done in pairs, lasts about 40 minutes, and is split into tiers so beginners and more experienced coders compete appropriately — the entry-level tier is Navigators, with Pathfinders above it.
  • Round 2 puts pupils into teams of three for a 60-minute round.

Teams can work in a range of languages — Python, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript or Visual Basic — so children use whatever their school teaches. Schools get free logins, and the exact dates vary from year to year (it usually runs in winter or spring), so this is one to check on the official site for the current season.

What I like about the Perse challenge, as a parent, is the team part. A lot of children who freeze at the idea of a solo exam relax completely when they are solving a problem alongside a friend — and coding in a pair or trio mirrors how software is actually built in the real world.

The facts, side by side

The Coding Challenge Perse Coding Team Challenge (PCTC)
Who can enter Invitation only — roughly the top 10% of Bebras entrants; KS3-accessible Year 11 and younger, so KS3 pupils welcome
When About 45 minutes, usually the third week of January Varies by year (typically winter/spring) — check the site
How it works In school; Blockly (blocks) for younger entrants, text code (e.g. Python) for older ones In school; Round 1 in pairs (40 min), Round 2 in teams of three (60 min)
Languages Blockly or Python Python, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript or Visual Basic
Cost Effectively free (follows on from free Bebras) Free logins for participating schools
How to enter Ask the school to run Bebras first School registers at the official PCTC site
Official source bebras.uk pctc.perse.co.uk

What a KS3 parent should actually do

You do not need to teach your child to code, and you do not need to buy anything. Nearly everything here happens through school, so the single most useful move is a short email to the head of computing asking two questions: Do you run Bebras in November? and Would you enter a team for the Perse Coding Team Challenge? Many schools already do; some simply have not been asked.

At home, the best preparation is not drilling syntax — it is protecting your child's curiosity. If they are tinkering with Scratch, building something in Minecraft's redstone, or asking how an app works, that is the raw material. A Socratic tutor that refuses to just hand over the answer suits this kind of child far better than a crammer, because coding competitions reward working a problem out, not memorising it. And if your child gets keen, resist the urge to turn a hobby into a homework schedule — burnout kills more competition interest than difficulty ever does.

For the child who takes to all this and wants to know where the road eventually leads, the summit of school-age coding in the UK is the British Informatics Olympiad — years away for a KS3 pupil, but a lovely thing to point at.

FAQ

Does my child need to already know how to code?

No. The Coding Challenge lets younger entrants use Blockly, a drag-and-drop system where you build programs visually instead of typing. The Perse Coding Team Challenge has a beginner-friendly Navigators tier. Both are designed so a curious KS3 pupil can take part without months of prior coding.

How does my child get into The Coding Challenge?

It is invitation-only. Your child first sits the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge at school in November — no coding required. Roughly the top 10% of Bebras entrants are then invited to The Coding Challenge in January. The route in is simply asking the school to run Bebras.

Are these competitions expensive?

No. Both run through schools and are effectively free. Bebras is free, The Coding Challenge follows on from it, and the Perse Coding Team Challenge gives participating schools free logins. The main requirement is that the school signs up.

Duke Harewood built aitutors.me's tutors (Mentor and Professor Pi) for his own Year 8 daughter. He writes about UK education, competitions, and helping curious children go deeper without burning out.