Swartkops Primary School in Gqeberha leads the way again with a self-supported coding club, which has been running at the school since February this year.
No stranger to coding excellence, the school’s coding team has won numerous coding competitions hosted by Tangible Africa in Nelson Mandela Bay, since Swartkops Primary School Technology teacher, Victoria Olivier, bought the school’s first coding kit with her personal funds and started the club in 2020.
One of the school’s former learners, Norman Msaka, received a high school bursary from Amazon vice-president, David Brown, in recognition of his coding skills.
Tangible Africa, an engagement project of the Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences Department and the Leva Foundation, was instrumental in setting up the coding club at Swartkops Primary School, as well as securing the bursary for Msaka.
It was during a workshop which Olivier attended with Tangible Africa last year that Tangible Africa Founder, Professor Jean Greyling, mentioned his dream of having self-supported coding clubs.
Olivier said,
In order to get a trained Tangible Africa facilitator to run the self-supported coding club at Swartkops Primary School, parents were requested to pay a small fee, and once they had given their buy-in, the club started operating in February.
It is clear from the learner responses that they love the coding club at Swartkops Primary School. One Grade 7 learner, Ayabonga Bhe (13), said she has learned teamwork through coding.
Bhe said,
Along with the Tangible Africa facilitator, Sisikelelwe (Siki) Mtambeka, Olivier plans to introduce robotics and possibly computer lessons in the future, at the club.
Mtambeka said she loves working with the children of Swartkops Primary School.
“The children in the Swartkops Coding Club are so enthusiastic. I’ve watched some of the new kids, especially the little ones (Grade 4), coming out of their shells socially. I’ve also just watched them really exercise their brain muscles and applying their minds. This happens without them even seeing it because, as far as they are concerned, they are just playing games and participating in coding.”
