20/7/2022 

This summer St Philip Evans R.C. Primary School in Llanedeyrn joined pupils from Australia, India, Iraq, and the USA to celebrate a decade of Code Club: a global charity that supports after-school coding clubs around the world.

Over 4,000 children took part in seven, hour-long codealongs, held by Code Club teams in New Zealand, Australia, India, Iraq, the UK, Ireland, and the USA, where children learned how to create a brand-new party piñata game using the block coding language, Scratch. Children used images of party treats from around the world, and learned how to add music and fun features to their games.

Cabinet Member for Education, Employment and Skills, Cllr Merry said: "Opportunities like Code Club provide children and young people with the chance to engage with computing and programming, helping to improve skills and promote learning with computers. This is a wonderful accomplishment for pupils and staff at St Philip Evans R.C. Primary School who can be proud to have established links with other children all over the world, through coding."

Launched in 2012 in the UK, Code Club has become a global community of educators, volunteers, and young coders. Code Clubs have been registered in over 150 countries, helping young people aged 9 to 13 to learn how to create games, animations, and websites with free-to-use projects. The entertaining coding projects cover a range of coding language and themes, from space, to art. Each project is designed to be usable by coders of all levels, so that anyone can run a club regardless of whether or not they have any previous coding experience. 

Year 6 teacher, Katie Davies, said "My favourite thing about running Code Club is the excitement and joy you see in the children when they have conquered their challenge. It brings children from different year groups together and allows them to learn from each other. I highly recommend setting up a Code Club! The birthday codealong inspired the children and they are now keen to complete Scratch projects regularly."

Ruby (aged 11) from St Philip Evans R.C. Primary School described what she enjoys about Code Club: "I love going to Code Club because I am passionate about coding and enjoy the challenge. The birthday codealong was great because the project involved food from all around the world in the party piñata, showing how people from all over the world can get involved and enjoy coding".

Code Club is one of the largest educational programmes of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, whose mission is to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies regardless of their background. Code Club is part-funded by the sales of Raspberry Pi computers which are manufactured at Sony's Pencoed factory just 20-minutes outside of Cardiff.

You don't have to have a coding expert in your school to run a Code Club, as all the projects provide step-by-step instructions. If your school is interested in starting a club, then check out the Code Club website at codeclub.org, and join one of the ‘Getting Started with Code Club' webinars (see website for details).