In fact, they speak four languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

The Canberra Girls Grammar fifth-graders won the Young ICT Explorers competition ACT division in September when they created a website devoted to raising awareness about the endangered orangutan.

What started out as a bit of instruction in website development by Lauren's older brother Thomas grew into a bright and informative database devoted to environmental issues affecting orangutans such as palm oil cultivation, and even includes an interactive quiz.

"Speak Up for Animals Who Can't" won both the year 5-6 competition and the people's choice.

It also showcases high-level ICT skills among Canberra students at a time when the territory's performance has shown the greatest deterioration of any state or territory in the latest national report card.

The fact the team is all-girl also bucks a national trend – boys generally display more confidence in ICT tasks and tend to outperform their female classmates.

"I didn't really know much about coding, but my brother showed me and I looked in some text books and just began experimenting," said Lauren. "It's mainly about trying different things and using different languages. It's fun!"

While the ICT national results show a high level of proficiency in year 6 and 10 students using communications devices and social media, Lauren and her friends saw ICT as a skill which would "allow us to work in the jobs of the future".

Evie's home most nights was declared screen-free, and Emily said that if she wasn't doing homework she would prefer to play outdoors than surf on a computer.

They all agreed that learning to become proficient at ICT was not the same as playing games on an iPad.

"Games can be really distracting but coding can be really hard to do, you need to concentrate," Lauren said.