8 of our T Level students attended a Hackathon at IBM's office earlier this month. One of our Year 13 Digital students Shane Anie, wrote up an article on his experience:

On Friday 14th February I was able to take part in IBM X NatWest Group’s 2025 hackathon, and what an experience it was !

The day started with many talks from senior managers and employees from both companies, such as Jenny Taylor MBE, who gave informative insights into the world of work in IBM’s early professional programmes, as well as engaging introductions into her specific fields and explaining many stand out tools and software such as IBM’s WatsonX and the NatWest accelerator. After breaking up into teams, we were eager to work on the problem statement; ‘How do we empower aspiring entrepreneurs using IBM and NatWest tools?’ , and through careful decomposition from my team we were able to present our solution back to the judge panel, implementing an engaging and interactive way for entrepreneurs to be trained and mentors by existing innovators, and with this solution, my team ended up winning the event !

Thanks Shane for contributing to our blog and we're glad you all made the most of this wonderful opportunity!