Summary
We present two outreach programmes run by Sydney University for high school students: the National Computer Science School (http://www.ncss.edu.au) and the Girls' Programming Network (http://sydney.edu.au/it/gpn). For the past four years we have been teaching Python to students in grades 9-12, and based on this experience we will discuss why Python is a good first language and the parts of it which are still difficult for students to grasp.