Four Cheadle Hulme students are celebrating after coming first place in a cyber security competition. 

Scarlett, Jaxon, Charlie, and Cora – all BTEC Digital Information Technology students from St. James' Catholic High School – secured the win in the Callsign Challenge, which sees students from five boroughs compete to design the best solution to a cybersecurity problem. 

In a live final at Manchester's HOME gallery, the students were presented with a trophy for their work on a cross-platform age verification app. 

The proposed app would mean users only need to verify their age once, with the information being shared securely across platforms. 

The Challenge was created in a partnership between cybersecurity company Callsign and State Talking, which matches Greater Manchester state schools with successful people from similar backgrounds. 

The students spent three months working on their project with the help of a mentor from Callsign, before going on to pitch their ideas at the final, alongside schools from Bury, Levenshulme, Eccles, and Urmston. 

Scarlett, 14, was a member of the winning team. She said: "We suggested creating an app, where you register your personal details so they can be used by other companies to create accounts safely and securely. 

"Other companies would partner with us and use our app when customers want to create an account. That way they could guarantee that they get the correct information and that customers are not lying about their age. 

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"It simplifies the process for everyone, as it means you only enter your details once." 

"I really enjoyed the challenge, especially designing the app," teammate Jaxon, also 14, said. 

"The presentation was very nerve wracking but also exciting and I was really happy when we won!" 

The winning students have now been invited to spend a day with Callsign founder Zia Hayat and his wider team. 

"The Callsign Challenge has supported young people to build teamwork, leadership and problem solving skills, developing the ability to present an idea and showing real-world relevance by responding to our brief," said Callsign's Chris Hutton, who led the Challenge. "It has also helped to give them insight into the tech industry and roles within it. 

"The teams came up with some highly innovative solutions to questions like 'How could a company check someone's age without making the sign-up process slow or annoying?' 

"We were really impressed with all of them. But we had to pick one winner and St James' Catholic High School are very worthy of the title."  

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