Will Ivanka and Arabella Trump Inspire the Next Generation of Coders?

The Trump family often receive a lot of bad press in the media. One story caught my eye this week was one of inspiration.  Speaking to school students at an event held at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Ivanka Trump said she and her 5-year-old daughter, Arabella will be taking part in a coding class together this summer.

“As a mom, I am trying to do my part, as well. My daughter, Arabella, and I are enrolling in a coding class this summer,” Trump said at. “We’re excited to learn this incredibly important new language together. Coding truly is the language of the future. “

I do agree with Ivanka, coding is truly the language of the future. Kids from an early age need to learn how to code and to learn the logic behind coding. In order to equip our kids with basic skills they need for later life, in my opinion coding must be taught as part of the national primary school curriculum alongside maths, science and English.

In England, computer coding was supposedly introduced into the school curriculum in 2014 following a document produced in 2010 by two leading figures in tech companies calling for a transformation in the way computing was taught in the UK. Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope’s Next Gen report was initiated by concerns that the UK tech industry were not succeeding in finding the skills they needed to develop and compete.

Two and a half years have passed since the introduction of the new curriculum. One of the over-riding issues reported about the new curriculum is that the teachers have not received sufficient support and do not have the required skills to facilitate their students to learn how to code. Organisations such as Code Academy and Code Club provide a valuable resource to assist teachers to learn the skills however not enough training time is allocated to teachers to take part in these courses.

Yesterday, I attended a parents evening at my children’s primary school. I asked the teachers what they are teaching as part of the computer curriculum at school. I was surprised to discover that only 1 lesson per week is allocated to computers. The teacher confessed to me that they struggle in teaching computers as the kids know more than they do.

It is clear to me that what is being provided within the UK school system in terms of coding and computer skills is still not sufficient. As parents, if we want to give our kids the coding skills they will need for the future, we need to seek extra-curricular clubs to facilitate this.  It may be a good idea to follow the lead of Ivanka and Arabella and enrol in a summer code camp this August.

About the Author

Evan is the CEO of in Escrow London which is one of the UK’s leading private software escrow provider protecting the source code of hundreds of companies in the UK, USA, UAE and Africa.

Escrow London provides:

• Software Escrow for source codes.
• SaaS Escrow to protect the code and client data in hosted applications.
• Information Escrow – protecting intellectual property such as technical drawings, formulas and mechanical plans.
• Source Code Verification – designed to independently test that source codes can be rebuilt into a functioning application.