A CRACKING time was had by a group of computing students from a Rugby secondary school when they visited the top secret home of Britain’s Second World War codebreakers.
Students from The Avon Valley School and Performing Arts College visited Bletchley Park, which is now a museum and heritage site, to learn about ciphers, coding and the history of computers.
A group of forty students from Year 9 to Year 11 visited the historic site where the complex German enigma code was cracked during the Second World War.
During their visit, the students learnt about the secretive history of the site, and explored Bletchley Park’s grounds on a guided tour. The group also visited the buildings and huts where the mathematicians and codebreakers – including the world famous Alan Turing – worked throughout the war.
The students followed in the codebreakers’ footsteps and attempted to crack the Lorenz cipher using their computing knowledge, and armed with instructions about encoding and decoding a message using a cipher code. They also had chance to get up close to a replica enigma machine.
Headteacher Alison Davies said: “This was a wonderful chance for students to visit an important site from the nation’s history and learn about how the first computers were developed.
“It’s really important that students have the opportunity to visit museums and heritage sites to help underpin what they learn with us at school.”
