The winners of a coding battle have been announced after young programmers from two schools slugged it out at the keyboard for the top award.

Yavneh College, in Hillside Avenue, took the top prize as Ben Heath won first prize while Luke Murphy and Walid Ketami of Hertswood Acdemy, in Cowley Hill, came second.

Coming in with third were Shimon Fiddler and Zack Kaufman of Yavneh, along with a runner up team of Eve Lewis and Gracie Smith.

Hertswood’s runners up included Chloe Heaps, Lucy Gullotti and Sophie Davis, along with Nathali Ponnamperuma and Nimmi Islam.

The young coders were awarded the prizes for creating an exciting computer game.

Prizes were presented yesterday in a ceremony at Hertswood School.

Colin Jackson, who leads ICT at Yavneh College, said: “It’s great to see our learners getting to grips with programming at such a young age. It’s an exciting time in computing education as we try to train the next generations of computer scientists to help make the UK the global number one choice for tech-related business investment.”