New record for the EU Code Week: more than half a million people took part in 2015
Publication date: January 18, 2016
Almost 570,000 people cross Europe and beyond learned to create with code during EU Code Week that took place from 10 to 18 October 2015.
Thousands of events were organised where people, from children to seniors, could learn how the computer works behind the screen.
Get ready for EU code week 2016 – 15 to 23 October!
7,594 events took place in 49 countries in the EU and beyond including the United States and Australia as well as countries in Africa and Asia.
Code Week – which started as a European movement – went world-wide in 2015. Apart from the EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey events took place in Australia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Egypt, South Korea, Moldova, Morocco, Russia, Taiwan, Tunisia, Ukraine and the United States.
Top of the events league were Italy (2,369 events) and Poland (2,064 events) followed by Spain (509), Greece (305) and Ireland (236). In total 569,700 people participated in EU Code Week events, well over 526,000 participants in the EU. 88,763 students also learnt to code in Africa – through the Africa Code Week initiative, a spin-off of EU Code Week, led by a multi-stakeholder partnership including SAP.
Results from a survey among volunteer organisers show that 44% of all events targeted primary school children and 25% high school students. The average age of participants was 14 years. Of all participants, 48% were girls or women. The majority of events focused on basic programming concepts e.g. working with visual or block programming and tutorials.
An international “Ode to Code” video contest
113 candidates participated in the Ode to Code video contest. The three most popular videos were submitted by Massimiliano Aiello (5,271 views), Scuola Primaria San Tarcisio e dell’Infanzia Bimbi Lieti (3,338 views) and Roberto de Cruto (2,951 views).
The EU Code Week and the video competition inspired the MIT Media Lab, which developed a special section on Scratch, the Ode to Code Dance, where Scratch lovers can code an interactive dance scene, combining music and dance moves to celebrate EU Code Week.
200 most active schools
Thousands of schools coded during Code Week and 603 of them took part in the CodeWeek4All challenge, which aimed at introducing pupils and students to coding in the classroom. A third of the participating schools reached the goal of involving more than half of their students – or at least 200 of them – in a coding activity and will receive a Certificate of Excellence in Coding Literacy
from the European Commission. In more than 80 of the schools, virtually all students coded. More than 7,000 people were involved in the CodeWeek4All challenge.
Almost a million reached through social media
The Code Week Thunderclap campaign had a social reach of 859,412 people. From 1 September to 31 October 2015, 17.704 tweets were sent or retweeted using the hashtag #codeEU and or @CodeWeekEU.
Get ready for next EU Code Week – 15 to 23 October 2016!
The next edition of Europe’s Code Week will take place from 15 to 23 October 2016. Contact your school, local ICT business, library, or university and get in touch with your coding community to make the Code Week 2016 an even bigger success.
Background
The third edition of EU Code Week took place 10-18 October 2015. It brought together children, teenagers, adults, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs and policymakers in events and classrooms across Europe to learn to create with code.The aims of the initiative are to show how people can bring ideas to life with code, to make programming more visible, demystify these skills and bring motivated people together to learn.
EU Code Week is a grass-root movement run by volunteers who promote coding in their countries as Code Week Ambassadors, but all code event organisers are encouraged to add their event to the codeweek.eu map. The initiative was launched in 2013 by the Young Advisors for the Digital Agenda for Europe. In 2014 more than 150,000 people participated in 4,200 coding events in 36 countries in Europe and beyond.
As part of its strategy for a Digital Single Market, the European Commission supports EU Code Week and other independent initiatives. The Commission will also address coding, and other digital skills and expertise in future initiatives on skills and training such as the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020) In 2016, the European Commission will present a comprehensive skills agenda to ensure that Europeans can acquire or upgrade skills that can better meet the demands of the labour market, including for digital jobs.
