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Primary school pupils complete college ‘coding club’

Pupils from St. John the Baptist CoE Primary School have completed an eight-week Computer Science project at Stockton Sixth Form College.

The Year 6 group, pictured, visited the college to learn more about new technologies and programming in a specially designed ‘coding club’.

The group were taught to think logically about the steps involved in simple computer games before building their own, and moved on to a more complicated program simulating the operation of a vending machine, learning about coding constructs such as sequence, selection and looping in the process.

Computer Science was introduced to the national curriculum in September 2014 by Michael Gove, meaning children aged 5 and above are now expected to understand what the former Education Secretary called ‘the language of the future’ – computer programming.

The coding club children were each presented with a certificate as a reward for their hard work and effort during the project.

Joanna Bailey, Principal of Stockton Sixth Form College, said: “We understood the pressure placed on local primary schools to be able to get to grips with this huge addition to the curriculum and wanted to offer our support.

“We have been teaching Computer Science at the college very successfully for many years and thought it was a fantastic opportunity to share our expertise with younger generations, many of whom will be taking the lead of advancing new technologies in years to come.”

Kerry Coe, Headteacher at St. John the Baptist CoE Primary School, said: “This is one of many exciting projects we have been involved with and I delighted with how the partnership we have with Stockton Sixth Form is going.

“Our pupils have gained a lot from this project and we look forward to continuing this in the future.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Samantha Hockney .