Hackney ‘coding month’ raised awareness of tech in schools

Hackney’s campaign to raise awareness of coding in primary schools came to an end this week.

The council teamed up with Hackney Learning Trust, Samsung and local tech partners for February’s #GetHackneyCoding month.

As well as promoting coding in schools, with 44 tech businesses signing up as volunteers to teach after school clubs, the campaign has helped to launch a series of free Code Club Pro Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training sessions for 80 primary school teachers.

A competition for 5 to 18-year-olds to design their own game and win the chance to build it was also running throughout, and ended on 9 March.

Mayor Pipe said: “The Get Hackney Coding campaign, with the support for all of our partners, has helped draw attention to the latest addition in the school computing curriculum which will help to give young people the skills to forge future careers in the tech sector, an industry that is strongly linked to Hackney’s economic growth and worth an estimated £105 billion in the UK alone.

“The Get Hackney Coding campaign has been a great success, using social media to reach an audience of over 6 million online or offline in homes, schools and the workplace. I am looking forward to seeing the great things that will come out of Hackney’s month of code over the year ahead.”