Our Mission: To get more girls into coding!
At The Code Zone, we believe that anyone and everyone should have access to learning to code regardless of their gender or background. Which is why we want to discuss the research done by King's College in London in regards to female students studying computer science.
At The Code Zone, we believe that anyone and everyone should have access to learning to code regardless of their gender or background. Which is why we want to discuss the research done by King's College in London in regards to female students studying computer science.
According to the new research done by King's College, the number of female students studying computing in England has halved in just under a decade. Prior to the switch from the ICT GCSE to the Computer Science GSCE, 43% of the ICT candidates in 2015 were girls compared to them only making up 21% of the Computer Science cohort in 2023.
Though the change from the ICT syllabus to the Computer Science GSCE has seen an increase in students overall since its establishment, it has unfortunately coincided with the downfall of female students taking up the subject. Dr Peter Kemp, a senior lecturer in computing education at King's College, fears that the current GSCE which focuses on developing programming skills may not appeal to young people, especially girls.
He stresses that we need to ensure that the subject is appealing to all students and that it meets the needs of young people and society.
In order to appeal to young people, and especially girls, we need to teach coding in a way that is fun and accessible. Girls are interested in coding and technology, however they need a girl-friendly space where they can flourish in this subject. This is why we have a high priority on ensuring that all our coding clubs are engaging and child-led.
We focus on learning practical, life long and creative coding skills - not just covering topics and theory. We encourage self expression and creativity within our clubs; all of our members have access to fully working games which they can then hack and mod to make their own.
This gives the power to the children to learn programming and a coding in a way that suits their interests and needs; promoting a girl-friendly coding environment.
Young girls respond well to female role models and we are proud to say that the majority of our coding mentors are female who harbour their own ideas and mentoring styles. We have talented female mentors in our online Game Dev Club, teaching Scratch, MakeCode and Python, as well as female mentors at our in-person clubs.
We make sure that in this male-dominated industry that they are at the fore-front of what we do; celebrating their successes and providing them with the training and knowledge to inspire young girls to get into coding. At The Code Zone, the percentage of girls who make up our members increase every year and it is undeniable that our female mentors have a huge and positive impact on those numbers.
You can find out more about all our mentors on our website, as well as book as taster session for your daughter to get her journey into coding started. We look forward to welcoming her soon!
Who wrote this
We run coding clubs for children aged 6 to 16, so the guides here are written by the mentors who teach them rather than by a marketing team. Live online clubs are open to children anywhere in the UK, and our in-person clubs run across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.
A live club is one hour a week, in a group of no more than six, with the same DBS-checked, STEM-certified mentor.
Children build their own games rather than working through a set course, starting in Scratch or MakeCode and moving to Python and TypeScript when they are ready. More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join.
Mentors write a note on every child after every session, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move up a level or would rather stay where they are. Levels move down as readily as up. Nothing is forced, and staying put is a perfectly good outcome.
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, and in 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society. Over 1,000 children are enrolled.
More like this
The blog is in two halves. Guides are the evergreen explainers written by the mentors who teach the clubs, covering the questions parents actually ask: what comes after Scratch, how to support a coding-mad child when you cannot code yourself, and what works for autistic and ADHD children.
Club news is the other half, and it is where posts like this one live: game jams, Minecraft builds and weekly roundups, written up by whoever ran the session. Neither is marketing. If you want to know what an hour actually looks like before you book anything, club news is the more honest read of the two.
The first session is a free taster and we do not ask for card details. Book a free taster session, see what it costs, or read about support for neurodivergent children.
