Introducing the Code Club at Robert Laws Secondary School, Malawi

Our first Code Club after being accepted as a Code Club Growth Leader was set up at Robert Laws Secondary School in the Mzimba District, Malawi. The club started meeting regularly for an hour every Friday and Saturday in October 2019 and currently has 28 members. The club is supervised by 2 adult volunteers and students have already done courses in SCRATCH and HTML, with a couple of students learning C++ as well. You can hear the students talking about their experiences in Code Club in this video.

According to Knowledge Ng’ambi, the ICT teacher at Robert Laws Secondary School

Taking part in the Code Club has inspired students to think about studying computer-related courses at university and to use computers to access information for other subjects they are studying.

Knowledge Ng’ambi, ICT teacher at Robert Laws Secondary School

We conducted some evaluation in December, interviewing 13 students involved in the Code Club. All but one of the students interviewed felt that attending the Code Club had improved their performance in Computer studies. 7 students were planning a career in ICT, 4 in Engineering, 1 in Science and 1 in Journalism. As there is only very limited access to the internet in the school (as is the case in almost all schools in Malawi), the Code Club was set up using printed worksheets. However, the feedback was that the students were keen to be able to access resources and training materials on the internet and that is something we are working to facilitate.