The impact of Code Club around the world

In November 2018 we asked Code Clubs across the world to share their experiences and feedback through our survey. The survey was translated into eight languages and we received responses from 1340 volunteers and club leaders in 59 countries!

Read on to find our key highlights and the most important things we’ve learned about the impact of Code Club around the world.

Picture of a Code Club volunteer  

We wanted to build up a picture of what a Code Club volunteer looked liked across the world. We started by looking at the characteristics of a volunteer and found that there was a wide age range among educators and volunteers. The three largest volunteer age ranges were 35-44 (32% of all volunteers), 45-54 (28%), and 25-34 (18%).

55% of these volunteers told us they were professional educators, and 30% said they work in a STEM occupation.

The gender of educators and volunteers was fairly balanced: 52% are female, and 46% male.

What a Code Club looks like

Unsurprisingly, we found that 67% of educators and volunteers told us their club is hosted in a school, followed by libraries where 20% of Code Clubs are held. The size of a club varied, with 15 children on average attending each session.

We were really interested to find that clubs in North America tend to have more attendees on average, whilst clubs in the UK tend to have fewer.

Girls in Code

Globally, over 400,000 girls have accessed Code Club, and the overall proportion of Code Club attendees who are girls is 40%. This is fantastic and we’re very proud of this achievement.

Over 52% of the volunteers who support Code Clubs globally are female, too.

“The girls are definitely more confident in their abilities to solve problems using computers and coding.”

– Amy, teacher, UK

We will continue to encourage girls to engage in coding and share good news stories in our blog and social channels.

How children are developing their skills and abilities  

Children come to Code Club to have fun and learn new skills, and the graph below shows the impact Code Clubs are having on children’s skills and abilities.  

These statements show how children attending Code Club are more confident in their own computer skills, and an amazing 92% of volunteers say that young people they reach have improved their problem-solving and programming skills.

Code Club projects

Our free projects are an essential part of the running of a club. We asked clubs how they made use of online and printed resources, to see how the learning experience varies from club to club.

It was clear that the reliability of internet access was a key factor in deciding whether to use online or printed versions of our resources.

Experiences of volunteers

It was great to read volunteers’ feedback on their own experiences. Many told us how excited their members were to learn new skills, but more than this, they also described how running a Code Club has encouraged them personally to pursue and develop their own interests in coding and computing.

“I enjoy passing on my skills, and young people have fun and learn in the process. I know that some that have gone on to secondary school have been very much ahead of their peers in computer skills.”

– UK volunteer

Volunteers also shared with us how opportunities at Code Club have helped children to grow in confidence and resilience, to develop problem-solving skills, and to transfer these skills to their activities outside of Code Club.

This word cloud shows some of the most commonly used words in your feedback.

What’s next?

Because many clubs use printed resources only and we think some of these might benefit from giving the online versions a try, we will continue to communicate the advantages of using our resources online, and develop new features to support learning via our online projects with accreditation and assessments. We’ll also continue to support clubs who feel printed resources work best for them.

We’d like to understand the local factors that contribute to clubs in different regions having different average sizes, and particularly the reasons clubs in North America tend to be larger than those in other parts of the world. To do this, we’ll be speaking to clubs about how they run and the factors that have determined the size of their group.

We also hope to encourage even more girls to get involved with Code Club this year. Stay tuned on International Women’s Day (8 March) when we’ll be sharing stories from female Code Club volunteers around the world on Twitter and Facebook.

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Thank you!

We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who gave their time to complete this survey. To show our appreciation, we picked respondents at random and sent some Code Club swag to them in the US, UK, Iran, India, and Australia.

Your immensely valuable feedback allows us to take a close look at our programme, and at the opportunities for young people and volunteers to learn and develop their computing and digital making skills with Code Club.

For more in-depth results, the Research Team at the Raspberry Pi Foundation has put together a full survey report.

We’d love to hear how you are using our project resources or how you are encouraging girls to join your Code Club. Share your ideas with us on Twitter or Facebook, or by emailing us at support@codeclub.org.