Top 100 AQA Computer Science Pupils

Top 100 AQA Computer Science Pupils

Congratulations to our recent Old Paulines Xavi, James, Myles, and Eason (not pictured), who were recognised by Netcraft as among the top 100 performing AQA Computer Science A Level pupils in 2025. Xavi, James, and Myles attended a prizegiving event last week, where they met fellow high-achieving pupils and exceptional Computer Science university students.

Xavi reflects on the experience:

“We heard a few talks from a few software engineers at the company: one on intercepting QR code attacks in parking lots, and another on using AI computer vision to detect phishing scams from screenshots.

After some pizza and a chat with the other students, we did a competitive workshop centred on a toy cryptocurrency, Netcoin, that Netcraft had made custom just for these kinds of events. Netcoin had all sorts of security vulnerabilities that we both had to patch in our systems and exploit in other teams’ servers. James, Myles and I were all in a team, along with some other students we’d met there.

Safe to say it was a very hectic hour of frantically trying to fix all the bits of code we’d been given. We ended up coming a very respectable sixth out of twelve teams.

I had a great time and learned a ton about cybersecurity in just three hours. Really fantastic event!”