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More than 3,500 students from 21 schools have studied our Year 7 course. The students have learnt the fundamental of coding in the Python programming language, and created imaginative games as their capstone assignment.

Schools and teachers in the programme have been asking: “What’s next?”. The answer is our new Year 8 course, which continues the journey of learning the fundamentals of coding, and gives students the building blocks they need to study our exciting new Year 9 industry-powered elective.

The new Year 8 course also uses Python, and picks up where the Year 7 course leaves off. It’s designed to be taught over 10 weeks at around two hours per week, and covers core fundamentals including:

• Integer or number variables, and how to convert strings to numbers and numbers to strings
• Complex decisions using if, else, and elif
• Object-oriented fundamentals, including classes, objects, methods, and attributes
• Loops with the while statement

Once students complete the core of six lessons, their teacher has the choice of challenging them to build a graphical escape room game, or dive into the world of robotics with Edison robots and developing simple algorithms. After completing the course, students have studied all of the core coding requirements of the Australian Digital Technology Curriculum, with the unique industry-centred flavour of CS in Schools.

The new course is being tested with a cross section of schools, including Bialik College, McClelland College, Greensborough College, Gippsland Grammar, Mount Erin College, Haileybury, and Toorak College.

We’re looking forward to rolling out the new course across all current partner schools in 2021. If you’re interested in being part of CS in Schools, you can learn more here.