Bishop’s Stortford schoolboy Oscar Giblin cracks the winning code in global competition

A creative Bishop’s Stortford schoolboy has won a global coding competition.

Oscar Giblin, who attends the Avanti Grange secondary on the Stortford Fields estate, clinched first prize in the age 8-12 category of the challenge set by Fiero Learning, based in the USA.

The competition was open to young library users around the world and Oscar, 12, spotted the details at Bishop’s Stortford Library in The Causeway.

Entrants were told: “Your task is to create a story using a website. You can use HTML and CSS to make it look great, and if you want, you can add some JavaScript for extra features. Use words, images or anything else to make your story exciting and interesting.”

Oscar, who attended Northgate Primary School, created The Return-Minator, a tale of a robot who travelled back in time to return an overdue library book from the future which was stacking up a lot of fines!

His favourite subjects at school are design and technology and computer science, and his prize-winning efforts earned him a programmable robot.

Oscar, also a keen guitarist, lives in Bishop’s Stortford with parents Stuart and Stefanie.

Stuart said: “He’s always enjoyed writing and he absolutely loves coding. That’s why the competition was the best of both worlds for him.

“We both work in the education sector and have always encouraged Oscar to explore technology. However, coding is definitely an Oscar thing.”