Growing Code Club

For the past five years, Code Club has been working to inspire children in the UK to get excited about coding and digital making. We’ve seen our community grow rapidly in that time – there are now an amazing 5,750 Code Clubs engaging over 85,000 young people in the UK each week! We couldn’t have done this without our community of dedicated volunteers, educators, parents and young people who make Code Club possible.

When we started Code Club, we wanted to help primary schools adapt to the challenges of the new computing curriculum. Therefore, we have focused on creating teaching materials for children aged 9 to 11. At the same time we know there are many senior schools that use our current materials to run Code Clubs. We also know there is a huge demand from young people for more opportunities to gain experience of digital making, but there aren’t enough of these opportunities provided for them. We want to fill this gap, and so we’re excited to announce that we are extending Code Club to 9- to 13-year-olds. Starting in September, we’ll be supporting schools to set up Code Clubs for Years 7 and 8, and non-school venues to offer Code Club to a wider age group.  

Today, as a starting point, we are launching a pilot programme running in 50 UK secondary schools. Over the next few months, we’ll be working closely with these schools to find the best ways to make Code Club work for older children. We will also be expanding our curriculum and establishing free educational resources to cater for older children and more experienced coders. Like all our resources, they will be created by qualified and experienced educators and focused on helping young people build a wide range of skills and competencies, including teamwork, problem-solving, and creativity.

So if you know a school, youth club, library, or other venue that could host a Code Club for any young people aged 9 to 13, then encourage them to get involved. We can’t wait to welcome more children, volunteers and educators to our growing community of digital makers.