29th June, 2018
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
Six schools have emerged winners out of the 39 schools across the six Educational Districts in Lagos who participated in the four-day CodeLagos Week Competition grand finale.
The schools include three Schools from Senior categories and three from Junior Categories.
In the senior category, Lagos State Model College, Kankon emerged first, while Whitesands School came second and Supreme Education High School emerging third position.
Speaking at the grand finale in Yaba, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh said the Code Lagos competition was designed to encourage the use of wider ranges of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, STEM, skills within the school curriculum and also to raise ICT standards among the schools.
According to Bank-Olemoh, the students would be exposed to the world of computer programming as well as foster the rapid growth and development of coding skills while also positioning them for the twenty first century workforce.
Bank-Olemoh, who noted that CodeLagos was a mandate of Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s administration to prepare Lagos residents for the technology driven future, said over 1,340 Lagos residents were currently being trained in the third session of CodeLagos out-of-School programme holding in 12 centres across the State.
The Special Adviser added that over 150,000 Lagosians would be trained on coding by December 2018, saying that 1,500 schools would also be exposed to free coding in the next three months as part of the strategies to prepare the younger ones for the future challenges.
He insisted on meeting the target of training one million Lagosians on coding, saying that both public and private schools across the state were currently benefiting from the training, assuring that strategies were being put in place to ensure that greater part of the residents did not only understand coding but also know how to code, using computer programming language.
Bank Olemoh described CodeLagos initiative as largest education technology in Africa, stating that “everything you do today is revolves round the programming. Today, we have 337 schools that have coding classes regularly. We also have centres where coding is thought freely. We have in Ipaja, Yaba Meiran, Surulere; we are excited that we have been able to get thousands of people trained on coding.
“Before the end of 2018, we would have set up 1,500 In-School coding centres and 50 Out-of-School centres across Lagos State and by our projections, over 150,000 Lagos residents would have been trained by December 2018.”
Also Speaking, the Tutor General and Permanent Secretary, Education District IV, Mrs Lola Adegbite, urged the students to cease the opportunity to improve themselves, saying that many schools had keyed into the initiative and also called on stakeholders to support the administration in terms of funding.
One of the students, who won the first position in the junior category competition, Afolabi Williams also expressed his joy.
Another student, who participated in the coding, Iwelumo Claire, said she had learnt so many skills in coding so far, saying that she had been able to use coding to create an ATM game as well as used coding to convert pounds to naira.