Our Mission: To get more girls into coding!

At The Code Zone, we believe that anyone and everyone should have access to learning to code regardless of their gender or background. Which is why we want to discuss the research done by King's College in London in regards to female students studying computer science. According to the new research done by King's College, the number of female students studying computing in England has halved in just under a decade. Prior to the switch from the ICT GCSE to the Computer Science GSCE, 43% of the ICT candidates in 2015 were girls compared to them only making up 21% of the Computer Science cohort in 2023. 

Though the change from the ICT syllabus to the Computer Science GSCE has seen an increase in students overall since its establishment, it has unfortunately coincided with the downfall of female students taking up the subject. Dr Peter Kemp, a senior lecturer in computing education at King's College, fears that the current GSCE which focuses on developing programming skills may not appeal to young people, especially girls. He stresses that we need to ensure that the subject is appealing to all students and that it meets the needs of young people and society. 

In order to appeal to young people, and especially girls, we need to teach coding in a way that is fun and accessible. Girls are interested in coding and technology, however they need a girl-friendly space where they can flourish in this subject. This is why we have a high priority on ensuring that all our coding clubs are engaging and child-led. We focus on learning practical, life long and creative coding skills - not just covering topics and theory.  We encourage self expression and creativity within our clubs; all of our members have access to fully working games which they can then hack and mod to make their own. This gives the power to the children to learn programming and a coding in a way that suits their interests and needs; promoting a girl-friendly coding environment. 

Young girls respond well to female role models and we are proud to say that the majority of our coding mentors are female who harbour their own ideas and mentoring styles. We have talented female mentors in our online Game Dev Club, teaching Scratch, MakeCode and Python, as well as female mentors at our in-person clubs. We make sure that in this male-dominated industry that they are at the fore-front of what we do; celebrating their successes and providing them with the training and knowledge to inspire young girls to get into coding. At The Code Zone, the percentage of girls who make up our members increase every year and it is undeniable that our female mentors have a huge and positive impact on those numbers. 

You can find out more about all our mentors on our website, as well as book as taster session for your daughter to get her journey into coding started. We look forward to welcoming her soon!