News from the grown-up coding clubs at The Code Zone

We used to run clubs for adults as well as children, and this is the archive of that. Grown-ups who wanted to learn to code, often because their own child had started and they were tired of not following the conversation.

We are not running adult clubs at the moment. These posts are here because the material still stands up: what it is like to start from nothing as an adult, why the block-based tools are not beneath you, and how learning alongside your child works better than either of you expects.

What we do run is coding clubs for children aged 6 to 16, online across the UK and in person across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. A session is one hour a week in a group of no more than six with the same DBS-checked, STEM-certified mentor, and children build their own games rather than working through a set course.

If you cannot code yourself and want to help anyway, the guides section has a piece on exactly that: the four questions that unstick almost any bug, with no technical knowledge required.

The Code Zone runs coding clubs for children aged 6 to 16. Live online clubs are open to children anywhere in the UK and our in-person clubs run across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

A session is one hour a week in a group of no more than six, with the same DBS-checked, STEM-certified mentor every week, and children build their own games rather than working through a set course. The first session is a free taster and we do not ask for card details, so you can see whether it suits your child before deciding anything.

Most children start in Scratch or MakeCode and move to Python and TypeScript when they are ready. Levels move down as readily as up so the work always fits, and staying where you are is a perfectly good outcome.

Mentors write a note on every child after every session, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move on, and it is why a child who has gone quiet for three weeks does not simply go unnoticed.

More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join.

In 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society, and in 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers, scored by five independent judges on safeguarding, inclusivity and community impact.