Families can receive a $100 rebate these school holidays to put towards coding classes for children.
The NSW government recently announced the NSW Creative Kids Rebate, which provides parents with a voucher that can be used for creating activities including building coding skills.
Pupils from Gymea Bay, Connells Point and Brighton-Le-Sands public schools have been actively involved in coding education, and will advance their schools through Code Camp these school holidays.
Code Camp is one of the approved providers that accepts the voucher, which is available from January 1 for all parents of school aged kids in the state through Service NSW.
Briana Ranieri from Code Camp, says more girls are encouraged to apply.
“[There is a] large shortfall in the Australian tech workforce,” she said. “Our camps have a ratio of 60/40 boys to girls but we'd like to bring hat to a 50/50 split. We want to ensure girls have the tools needed for the jobs of the future.”
Children as young as five years of age can attend camps during the summer break – and no previous coding experience is necessary.
By the end of the three day program, children will know how to use block coding and Javascript to create their own game, which can be downloaded from the app store.
Camps run from January 7.
Fellow co-founder, Dan Zwolenski, says camps help schools integrate coding into the classroom.
“Digital technologies are now a compulsory part of the National School Curriculum, so schools are having to adopt new programs related to coding into their lesson plans,” he said.
“There has been a big surge in teachers taking our professional development courses so that they’re equipped to teach these new subjects to students.”