An evaluation of Code Club

Code Club is a volunteer-led initiative run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF). The club activities are usually after-school programmes which offer opportunities for young people aged 9 to 13 to learn and develop skills for coding. The Raspberry Pi Foundation can provide Code Clubs with free resources, projects, and tutorials to help volunteers and learners get started with coding and computing. The Foundation creates and disseminates educational materials, including a structured curriculum for clubs. These materials are designed to make learning to code fun and accessible. Young people create their own digital artefacts using skills and resources available in Code Club sessions. Code Clubs aim to provide a fun, informal, and collaborative environment where pupils and teenagers can learn to code and develop digital skills. The programme also aims to improve pupils’ non-cognitive skills by creating opportunities for practicing coding, knowledge about digital literacy and engagement with a wider community of young people who are interested in coding and programming skills. Club leaders/volunteers come from a wide range of backgrounds. Many are teachers who run Code Clubs as after schools or lunchtime clubs, but others are parents or people from the community, some of whom have a technical background. Some may volunteer to become Code Club leaders and advance their skills while teaching and mentoring young people. This new project evaluates the impact of Code Club on young people’s attitudes to general learning, to learning about coding, and performance in coding skills. It is run by the Durham University Evidence Centre for Education (DECE) - Durham University Evidence Centre for Education - Durham University/. The independent evaluation is a quasi-experiment in which 15 schools and one community library participated. Young people as Code Club members were compared with their peers who did not participate in the Code Club after-school activities. This included 412 pupils who were in Years 4 to 9 initially. The evaluation assessed impact outcomes using pre and post intervention surveys of non-cognitive learning attitudes and performance in a quiz on coding skills. The headline results are based on the gain scores of pupils’ attitudes to learning and quiz. In addition, a light-touch process evaluation was conducted to observe and report on other aspects such as reasons for and level of pupils’ participation in Code Club activities, Code Club leaders’ reasons for and experiences of volunteering for the Code Club, and challenges and barriers of running a club in schools and other sites such community libraries.