6 Countries Implementing Coding in Education
In an attempt to educate children technically and make their skills applicable for the upcoming future jobs, some countries are trying to adopt coding in their education curriculum in order to avoid kids’ displacement by robots and machines in the future and safely land in the right places in the career world. Investing in technological education is now a goal some countries are trying to achieve, some managed to cross a good mile and others are still at the beginning of the journey.
With the technological changes taking place everywhere, that every innovation you come across depends on coding, some countries started to respond to a new digital education system.
[H2] What are the Countries Implementing Coding in Education?
Coding, or computer science education, is now being considered as important as learning English or Math in schools; something that every child should know about. Some countries started to respond to these needs and started to make coding and computer science separate subjects that kids starting from primary school will learn.
There are some countries that started to teach kids how to code from kindergarten, such as Israel for example, which shows how much shaping the mentality of kids and giving them the chance to understand the world they are living in is important from the beginning.
- Singapore
Even though computer science education might have been adopted before in Singapore since 2014, it is going to be mandatory starting from this year, 2020. Instead of considering after-school coding classes, Singapore’s education ministry decided to make coding compulsory for students in schools starting 2020, it will be a 10-hour coding enrichment programme. In 2014, this coding programme which is called “Coding for Fun” was first launched as an optional enrichment class for primary and secondary school students. There are several places in Singapore that teach kids how to code, such as First Code Academy, Saturday Kids, Computhink Kids, SG Code Campus, and Early Coders Academy.
Back in 2017, The government announced $3 million plan that aims to distribute 100,000 pocket-size code-able gadgets to school-going children and youth through the following two years in order to teach them how to code.
- Philippines
It is shocking to know that Philippines spends the least when it is compared with Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, and Indonesia. The kids in Philippines, and even parents and teachers, are the ones who want to learn coding and make it part of the school curriculum; 97% of the students in the Philippines want to learn about coding and 96% wish if coding becomes a core subject in their schools.
Even though the government believes in the importance of coding for its children, its efforts are not yet seen much throughout the country. One of the places that started in the Philippines in an effort to educate children on how to code, there is Kaya Coding which was found by a group of Stanford graduates with experience at Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies; they wanted everyone everywhere to have access to coding.
The students of Philippine are interestingly willing to exert more effort and time in learning how to code since about 93% are willing to take courses off school time and 39% have already taken the lead and started to learn coding through online courses.
- Australia
Since most the jobs in the future will be more than the available talents, Australia is arming its kids in order to make them prepared for the future. The country is planning to educate kindergarten and older the basics of coding to avoid them being left behind when compared to other countries. The Australian government has allocated $64 million to fund early learning and school STEM initiatives under the Inspiring All Australians in Digital Literacy and STEM measure.
In the attempt to provide coding education in the country, there are some places where people could learn how to code. Australian Digital Technologies Challenges are a series of free online teaching and activities available to all Australian students. The Digital Challenges are online and unplugged classroom sources aligned to the Australian curriculum: Digital Technologies.
- South Africa
Already 50% of the jobs these days need technical skills and this is encouraging countries to pay more effort when it comes to coding education. South Africa started its coding education journey this year, 2020, by providing programs for teachers in order to teach them how to code and at the same time learn how to teach coding; as a start this plan is supposed to target 1,000 schools at the beginning.
From the different places that offer coding and programming courses, such as CodeX, CodeSpace, and Code College. “Software engineer” is considered the most in-demand job in South Africa and this is the reason why governments are paying much attention to technical education; they want their kids to fit in when it comes to the future jobs.
- United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates was one of the countries that responded to adapting the educational system to the technological changes taking place around the world. More than 90% of parents in UAE want to teach their kids coding, 35% of schools responded and started to implement coding classes for their students. When it comes to the UAE, it is important to mention that the country started to transform the whole educational system to make it more dependable on e-books, robotics, and other emerging technologies.
There are several different places in the United Arab Emirates that started teaching coding, such as The Code, Fun Robotics, STEM for Kids, La Wagon, and Skill Bloc; these mainly depend on courses and classes through which children could learn to code. One of the initiatives that took place in UAE is the “One Million Arab Coders” initiative which aims to ensure that one million Arabs are taught virtual coding techniques during the next three years.
- Qatar
One of the other Gulf countries that is trying to prepare its children for the technical changes that will take place in the future and educate them about the language of this future; coding. Qatar is known to be one of the Gulf’s region fastest education sector with the construction of 8 to 12 new schools, which calls out for its importance in educating those students correctly in order to be able to meet the needs of the future.
In addition to being one of the fastest education sectors in the Gulf, Qatar is also the 5th country for its quality for higher education and training. One of the places in Qatar that promote computer science education is Hamad Bin Jassim Center for K-12 computer science education which aims to promote computer science education in schools throughout Qatar to develop the students’ basic computational thinking skills.
Countries agree that coding is the important language of the future that kids should learn either in schools or off-school hours. The digital future and the increase in the number of technical jobs coming along is calling for similar percentage of children who know computer science or even the basics. A lot of countries have already taken the lead and started to implement coding in its education curriculum, and there are those who are still taking their initial steps.
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