Part of our purpose here at The Code Zone is to foster inclusivity and natural diversity. The Code Zone is about TRUE INCLUSION.
Written by our mentors
7 guides for parents · 0 posts from the clubs
During June we had the pleasure of celebrating Pride Month by drawing attention to some great LGBT coders throughout history who have changed the world for the better. This week, we’ve decided to do a similar sort of thing, to focus on another group of coders who have contributed just as much through history – women!
At The Code Zone, we believe that anyone and everyone should have access to learning to code regardless of their gender or background. Which is why we want to discuss the research done by King's College in London in regards to female students studying computer science.
This month is Pride Month, and so here at The Code Zone we want to bring some attention to some amazing LGBTQ+ coders throughout history who have made our lives so much more amazing with their inventions and ideas. We believe coding is for all people, and the history of computer science shows that this works out in the world’s...
How to prepare children for the digital landscape online.
By Becky Shepherd (Mentor, Game Dev Club)
In 2014, changes to the national curriculum were made specifically in ICT to help with the introduction of coding to children, replacing ICT with ‘Computing’.
Lucy Woodhead on her experience as a woman in coding, and why diversity in the technoloy sector starts with our children's education.
Coding has a diversity problem, and it starts long before anyone applies for a job. By the time children pick their GCSE options, a lot of them have already decided that technology is not for people like them, usually because they have never met anyone doing it who reminded them of themselves.
These posts are about that: the history that does not get taught, the people who were written out of it, and what we try to do about it in a Tuesday evening club. Some of it is celebration and some of it is uncomfortable, and we have tried not to flatten the second into the first.
Our clubs run online across the UK and in person across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, with over 1,000 children enrolled. More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join, and in 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society.
If you want practical advice, the guides section covers what to ask any coding club and what actually works for neurodivergent children.
The Code Zone teaches children aged 6 to 16 to code by building their own games. Outside the UK that is the Game Dev Academy, which is self-paced: there is no fixed session time, so a child works at whatever hour suits them in any time zone.
A STEM-certified, background-checked mentor answers by text and video message during the week, so nobody is left on their own with it, and children build their own games rather than working through a set course. Creating an account is free and takes no card details, so you can see the platform before deciding anything.
Children start in Scratch, and the mentor sets harder work as soon as they are ready for it. Levels move down as readily as up so the work always fits, and staying where you are is a perfectly good outcome.
Mentors write a note on every child, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move on, and it is why a child who has gone quiet for three weeks does not simply go unnoticed.
More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join.
In 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society, the UK's leading autism charity, and in 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers, scored by five independent judges on safeguarding, inclusivity and community impact.
Create a free account Pricing Neurodivergent support Meet the mentors
