The UK government and a coding charity have teamed up to ensure every child in Britain is taught how to code at school.
What it means: The UK government has just given £78 million to fund what might be “the world’s largest government experiment in computing education”. The idea is that the money will be used by Raspberry Pi, a charity, to train 40,000 teachers to teach kids to code. Those teachers will then run workshops in every school in the UK.
There’s good reason to think British kids may benefit from this program. Being able to code is reckoned to be the skill that gives the biggest boost to your paycheque (upping it by about a fifth on average). And the UK tech sector is getting bigger and bigger all the time. It’s currently growing 2.5x times faster than the overall economy, which basically means it’s producing lots of valuable stuff (big profits, new products, groovy ideas etc.) If this trend continues, that means there will be lots of well-paid, high-skill jobs available in the sector, and giving kids some foundation in the skills needed could help them clinch those jobs when they grow up.
The government isn’t just playing nice by helping future generations get good jobs down the line. More people earning higher wages means more tax money for the government to spend (thanks to income tax). And more skilled workers producing lots of stuff means higher economic growth. As long as the UK government continues to regards this a good measure of economic success, this effort means they’ll be able to report more positive stories about the economy.
Read or explainers on economic growth and employment.
