Just girls are allowed to take part in a competition rolled out by the Government yesterday to encourage them to take up computing studies in Form 3.

Called Only Girls Allowed, the competition will run until November 4. It is open to 11- and 12-year-olds who must team up in groups of three to create a 3D game using Kodu or an interactive story using Storytelling Alice with the help of a schoolteacher.

These two programming tools are available for free online, and the themes they can choose include nature, music and fashion.

The competition is being organised by the Malta Information Technology Agency, the University’s Faculty of Education, the eLearning Centre within the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education, and is supported by Microsoft.

Teachers were trained during the summer holidays to help the girls. In the meantime, NGOs who know girls who would like to take part are asked to get in touch with Mita if they need any training or equipment.

The winners will be chosen for their creativity, originality and the entertaining and quality aspects of their products. They will be given tablets, headphones and consoles as prizes.

Mita chair Tony Sultana said the competition was focusing on female students as according to research, fewer girls were opting for computer studies. The gender gap was growing and it needed to be addressed.

Parliamentary Secretary Edward Zammit Lewis said that in recent years, the number of female students opting for computing studies was half that of boys.

In 2012, 793 boys and 453 girls sat for the computing O level. Two years earlier, 972 boys and 549 girls took it. Education Minister Evarist Bartolo added that some 10 per cent of female students did better than their male peers in nearly all subjects, but this was not reflected in information technology. Literacy was not just tied to writing and reading in English and Maltese, he said.

www.mita.gov.mt/girlscompetition