Young codebreakers reached the final of a national cyber security competition.

The team of Year 8 students attending the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth were selected out of ten teams for the final of the ‘Cyber First’ competition.

The four, who competed against just over 11,000 girls from 840 schools in the initial stage, have now made it through to the final.

Alexa Wolf, Angelia Paz-King, Hattie Simpson and Laura Ferguson will compete in the national final in Scotland in March.

The students took part in a week of online challenges in various categories such as networking, logic and coding, cyber security and cryptography. Each challenge is based on skills used by cyber security professionals.

Team member Alexa said: “The best challenges were the ones where we worked together to pool what we knew and help each other find the answers. We really had to persevere with the challenges, do extra research and sometimes try several different approaches to find the solutions.”

Nick Lilley, head of computer science at RMS, said: “I am so incredibly proud of the girls and the effort they have put in to achieve this. It is a huge accolade both for the girls and for the school to have got through to the final.”

RMS head teacher Kevin Carson said: “I am delighted for and exceptionally proud of these four fantastic students. To have achieved such a high standard in a national competition shows the academic excellence of the pupils at RMS.

“The commitment they have shown, working in their own time, outside the curriculum is indicative of all that we are about at RMS.”