Rural Secondary School tops inaugural Robotics Coding competition

STUDENTS FROM THE MOUNTAIN VIEW ADVENTIST ACADEMY (MVAA) coded their way to the top spot of this country’s first Robotics Coding Competition.

Organised by the National Centre of Technological Innovation (NCTI), the prize-giving ceremony for the competition held among several schools on March, 27, 2025, was held on April 15, 2025.

Falling in behind the MVAA were students from the Campden Park Secondary School (Bethel High) in second place, while the team from the Buccament Bay Secondary School (BBSS) placed third.

The top three schools received trophies, while the students received a cash prize, and book bags from KFC.

All students were given a certificate and trophy for their participation in the competition.

At Tuesday’s ceremony student Josiah Francis from the Campden Park Secondary, and teacher Noah Horne from MVAA spoke about their experience in the country’s first coding competition.

For Horne it was an emotional moment where he reflected on Petrus Gumbs and the NCTI STEM summer programme which he said led him to pursuing employment in the field of Information Technology (IT).

“Mr Gumbs I thank you for that. Now I am here years later, having the same passion and now I am planting that seed into students…

“It is surreal for me to be standing here today because I am still trying to process what my students have accomplished in this competition,” Horne said, adding, “when we first signed up I thought we’d just get the robot to move forward, maybe turn a little and do a spin trick for style points, but the students- they had other plans in mind entirely.”

The MVAA had two entries in the competition, one with fifth formers, and the other with fourth formers. Horne said he was impressed by his students’ work, particularly his fourth-form group. “The level of code they produced, it exceeded my expectations.”

He explained that he did that type of coding in the same programming language when he was a college student pursuing CAPE studies.

“I was surprised because it took me two years to learn, and it took them a few sessions to learn it. I was really amazed with that,” the IT teacher said.

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