UK government pushes programming with Year of Code campaign

The UK government has announced its plans to boost the presence of computer programming in schools.

Dubbed the ‘Year of Code’, the campaign will see a series of events throughout 2014 to promote interest in programming, including a week-long event in March which will encourage an hour of programming tuition per student.

The push will also see £500,000 invested into educating teachers about poragmming before a new computing-inclusive syllabus is put into place this September.

“Computer coding is the lingua franca of the global technology economy,” said Rohan Silva, chairman for the campaign.

“If the UK is to remain at the vanguard of innovation worldwide, we need to ensure that our workforce is equipped with the skills of the 21st century, not of the past.”

“Year of Code is all about making sure this vital change takes place – and fast.”

A video promoting the Year of Code featuring the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and Nick D’Aloisio, who coded the news app Summly aged 15 before selling it to Yahoo two years later, was released as part of the announcement.

You can view the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrdvQp65EZE

 Image of code courtesy of Shutterstock.co.uk