Students were exposed to "intense" competition at a national coding festival.

A team of five students joined web design company CyberDuck, of Elstree, last week as part of the nationwide Festival of Code.

Sisters Asha and Maya Wills, 13 and 10, Daniel Vaughan, 15, Jake Sieradzki, 14, and Harjot Singh, 17, spent four days at the company office before travelling to Plymouth for a national competition held last Friday.

With the help of CyberDuck employees Dylan Smith and Benjamin Maugain, the group created a web app that lets parents know what time sunset will be - and then send a message to their children to let them know when they need to be home by.

Student coder Harjot Singh said: “Making the web app really taught us how to pull together as a team, having never met one another before and were not familiar with the languages required to produce a web app. The Cyber-Duck agency were a huge contributor to our success, so a big thanks to them.”

Following a presentation from the team at the Plymouth event, the group then competed against more than 1,000 students from across the country in the hope of being crowned ‘Best in Show’.

After battling their way through the first few rounds, the team were eventually beaten at the semi-finals.

Harjot added: “The homely feeling of Plymouth was an amazing experience, everyone being so friendly and driven by the same interests. The competition was certainly intense but in an extremely enjoyable manner, and I will definitely be coming back next year.”

Dylan Smith, centre lead for the Festival of Code, added: “We had a great time hosting the students at the office last week and accompanying them to Plymouth for the weekend. Everyone at Cyber-Duck is really proud of the students and their project. It was inspiring to see the them setting such a high standard of quality and innovation at such a young age.

“We are looking forward to continuing our guidance of this year’s students and expanding the group for next year’s Festival of Code.”