A Finnish minister says the government is mulling the idea of introducing computer programming to the syllabus of primary schools in the country. Alexander Stubb said last week that the youngsters could be doing basic programming and coding exercises for homework in the not too distant future.
The foreign trade and European affairs minister said modern children are familiar with technology and its myriad uses from an early age. He continued by saying they learnt how to play games and use gadgets which all required a certain amount of coding and programming.
According to news-site Mashable, Mr Stubb said he did not expect pupils in their first year of junior school to be developing apps, but that it would be nice if they were learning basic coding. He added that the lessons would encourage the children to become even more technologically savvy.
The minister continued by saying that even though the Finnish education system was among the best in the world, there was always room for improvement. He finished off with the statement that introducing the coding classes might actually be the very enhancement needed.
Finland may well emulate its Baltic Sea neighbour Estonia with coding classes for primary school students. Estonia is currently running a pilot project at 20 of its schools. ProgeTiiger gives youngsters tuition on all aspects of coding from basic logic to Java with.