We’re always interested to hear about new ways of engaging different people to learn more about coding and digital making. So when we heard that Leicester Libraries and Leicester City Council’s Family Learning team have been running a pilot project using Code Clubs to encourage parents and children to learn new skills together, we wanted to find out how they had got on.

The pilot was launched in a number of libraries in Leicester. Alison Greet, Family Learning Coordinator for Leicester City Council, told us why they decided to pilot with Code Club: “The Family Learning team wanted a way to work with parents to demystify the coding activities children were covering in school, so that we could help parents to help their children…The training that Code Club was offering gave us a way of piloting a course for parents and children working to code together in our libraries.”

Running the pilot:

The club sessions ran for six weeks, focussing on Scratch projects in 1.5-hour weekly sessions. Parents and children sat together and worked through the step-by-step instructions. Two staff members ran the sessions; this allowed one to focus on setting everything up, while the other helped out those who needed more support. The clubs encouraged collaborative learning; Sandy Gibbons from Leicester Libraries explained that “the atmosphere is supportive and collaborative with children being encouraged (or, in some cases, invited) to help each other or show ways to extend the projects.”

Alison added, “club leaders are not IT experts, but they found that the projects were easy to follow and deliver with confidence. The structured projects with clear instructions also enable independent learning outside club time. Skills are built logically and reinforced by repetition in later projects. Skills learnt as part of Code Club projects can be used on the Scratch website to create other projects at home.”

The benefits of running a Code Club:

Lots of new friendships were formed in Code Clubs, and with those friendships came increased confidence. Sandy explains, “one family specifically joined the club due to a child’s difficulties in interacting independently with groups. There was also great feedback from the adults, who reported their pleasure in having a shared interest that they and their child could talk about and work on at home.”

One of the volunteers said, “seeing parents and children working and progressing together is brilliant. The families really grow, taking responsibility for their learning through taking away evaluations to work on at home and continuing with projects in their own time. Code Club encourages parents to learn both alongside their children and independently, seeing how the children learn.”  

There were also fantastic responses from all families at the end of the course: all have asked to be contacted about further Code Club courses:

“I really look forward to the Coding Club each week. I spent a lot of time together with my daughter and feel really happy when I see her using her imagination and IT skills. She loves spending time on IT which is great for her future.”

“The projects are challenging, but, with a bit of brainstorming, we figured it out! Good mum-and-son teamwork!”

“Our family really enjoyed this club. It has given us a chance, as a family, to build our child’s confidence. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to experience Code Club as adults.”