EU Code Week 2020 in numbers
Publication date: February 17, 2021
By Annika Östergren Pofantis, EU Code Week coordinator, European Commission
In 2020, EU Code Week organisers registered 72.700 activities – the highest number of activities ever. In total, teachers and other activity organisers brought computational thinking, coding, robotics and other activities to over 3.4 million participants in the more than 80 countries around the world.
Despite the challenges that schools faced in 2020, 84% of the activities took place in schools. Half of the activities were organised in primary schools, 28% in pre-schools and 12% in upper secondary schools. The average age of participants was 10 years old and 41% were girls.
55% of the activities focused on playful coding activities and 20% on basic programming concepts. But an increasing number of organisers also offered activities in advanced disciplines such as 8% robotics, 5% game design, 3% data manipulation and 2% artificial intelligence (AI).
Of all activities, a fifth was organised online – mirroring school closures due to lockdowns. Another 20% were organised without computers for example by programming a friend to carry out the Code Week dance.
The results confirm the strong engagement of teachers in the initiative and that EU Code Week is an ideal opportunity to discover computational thinking, experiment with coding, create websites or apps as well as learn more advanced concepts such as data manipulation and artificial intelligence. Check out our free tutorials if you want to learn more about how to integrate Scratch, robotics, app making in your class. As the interest in AI is increasing we are launching the free online course AI basics for schools on 8 March.
Country statistics
When it comes to the number of participants in different countries the leaders were Turkey (1.7 million participants), Poland (632.000) and Italy (330.000).
When we look at how many activities were organised “per capita” Poland (20.653 activities), Estonia (672), Austria (3.302) and Malta (164) were the champions. You can see the results for each country in this document.
Despite the pandemic, Luxembourg (149 activities and 3.500 participants), Estonia (672 and 20.700), Poland (20.653 and 632.000), the Netherlands (155 and 4.500) and Croatia (1.033 and 36.000) organised significantly more activities and increased the number of participants compared to 2019.
Building alliances – Code Week 4 All challenge
The Code Week 4 all challenge brought together 15.994 people who connected their activity with more than 9 other organisers and/or in two other countries in 725 alliances. They will all receive the EU Code Week Certificate of excellence!
Moreover, 1.359 people organised 10 or more activities each and have been awarded the Super Organiser certificate.
To explore Code Week activities close to you, check out the map and filter it with your country. If you want to join EU Code Week and organise your own activity we have prepared a simple guide with tips and materials. To stay up to date follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
