Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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36. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of the commitment to implement coding into the primary school curriculum; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14279/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My Department is committed to providing a primary curriculum that will enable our children to develop the computational skills that are relevant in an ever changing digital environment, of which coding is at the forefront.

Currently my Department's the PDST Technology in Education service provides training for both primary and post primary teachers in ICT which includes 'Scratch' coding.  5,800 teachers received ICT training in 2017.

Following my request as part of the Action Plan for Education to have Coding integrated into the Primary Curriculum, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) sought expressions of interest from primary schools that currently teach coding. Following this call 15 schools have been invited to share their work related to coding. Examples of this work will be published on the NCCA website this year to support other schools, in the short-term, which might be interested in the area.

The second phase of work with schools will begin in the next few months. The NCCA will work closely with schools in testing different approaches to integrating coding in the Primary Curriculum and evaluating the effectiveness of these approaches in terms of children's learning outcomes, teachers' professional learning needs, the interface between coding and the rest of the curriculum, and supports needed to implement coding.

Furthermore, a large number of schools are also running voluntary coding programmes through initiatives such as Coder Dojo (over 200 dojos in Ireland),  Hour of Code, where over 200 events took place in Ireland and the  annual computer programming olympiad held at Dublin City University.