The man is a teacher – and a passionate one too.

Rolf Becker, who was born in Elsterberg in 1962, lives and loves his profession. He teaches computer science at the Friedensschule (Peace School) in Plauen. He has been the face of the school computer science competition for twenty years. He has been responsible for it and has been managing it with his colleagues from Saxony every year since 1998.

His teaching career started in Merseburg in 1983; he later taught in Greiz for three years and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he spent several years in Elsterberg. “When the senior school closed there, my journey took me to the Friedensschule, where I’ve felt very much at home since then,” Beckert explains. Beckert has been a specialist advisor for computer science in the area covered by the Saxon Education Office in Zwickau for years. And in this capacity, he is greatly concerned – about the shortage of teachers and the teacher training, which is so important for teaching computer science.

In addition to his work as a teacher, Beckert, who has been living with his partner for 25 years, has worked as a trainer at the BSV Elsterberg sports club for many years; he has nurtured many talented young people, who successfully launched their careers with the “Young people training for Olympia” programme.

But Beckert has always been specially attached to computer science and the competition, which was held for the first time in Bautzen in 1997.

“I’ve been on board since the competition was extended to cover the whole of Saxony one year later. The first stage of the competition is always held at the individual schools between December and the beginning of February. The winners at the schools then progress to the second stage in the regional finals. The Vogtland District and the former district administrator always believed that this topic was important. All computer science teachers are delighted that this is still a widely held view,” says Beckert; he stresses the importance of computer science development in the rural Vogtland region. The third stage of the competition is then held to assess pupils from all over Saxony.  

All the senior schools in the Vogtland region are normally involved in the competition. “Our computer science competition is directed at children in the sixth grade and pupils between the eighth and tenth grades. There’s always a school assessment too where the results are aggregated and the best schools win the “District Administrator’s Challenge Cup”.

“It’s rather a shame that this competition has not become an established element at grammar schools in the Vogtland region,” Beckert reports. However, Vogtland pupils regularly gain top places among the top three in the Saxon-wide assessment.

“This reflects the good quality of our teaching at our senior schools and the ideal support for talented young people. The competition firstly involves solving a theoretical part – this covers hardware, computer equipment and even encryption and coding. The practical part means working out table calculations, preparing diagrams or programming small tools for robot controls,” Rolf Beckert explains, describing the demands placed on the pupils. “The tasks are always designed to provide some stimulus for the computer science teachers in the schools too. Our colleagues also need to keep up with the times; so a little bit of new input doesn’t do them any harm either, particularly as developments in the IT world take place very quickly,” Beckert says. He and his colleagues in the organisational team always try to reflect the current state of technology in the computer science competition. “We try to involve the latest issues like apps or data protection in the theoretical part. That’s not generally possible in the practical part because of the wide variety of systems in use. At the end, our editing group examines the questions in order to exclude possible errors in the assignments from the outset. Things are often completed in a hurry so that the tasks are available at the beginning of December.”

What about his one wish for “his baby”, the computer science competition? “If everything stayed the way it is, that would probably be a success story in today’s world. The many restructuring measures in the education sector are placing tough demands on colleagues and could endanger the long-term continuation of the competition. It’s therefore very important that our event has the backing of the education minister and financial support is available from her ministry too. It’s also good that the Vogtland IT industry is right behind the competition,” Beckert says, full of confidence. The award ceremonies for the regional winners have been taking place at GK Software in Schöneck, Gett Gerätetechnik in Treuen, S-Cape in Reichenbach or Hetzner in Falkenstein for years. These companies then benefit from the competition in their search for trainees, because many of the computer freaks from the senior schools end up in training courses in the IT sector in the Vogtland region. “In that sense, we’re doing something to ensure that young people in the region have a future. That’s definitely a good idea,” says Rolf Beckert with a smile on his face.