Dr Roger Layton and the Department of Education are working on a project to introduce coding and robotics into the curricula at South African schools.
Layton stated that in the 2020 state of the nation address the President announced the introduction of coding and robotics in Grade R to 3.
He believes that it is important to prepare learners for a future where technology will have advanced and certain jobs may no longer be around.
The curricula indicated reading, writing and arithmetic with an additional section for robotics.
Layton stated that they have started implementing the subjects at schools with learners who have some kind of impairment or disability.
He discovered that “the word disability often does not apply when we work with these learners in an environment such as teaching coding and robotics.”
A course structure was developed for educators, passed through the South African Council of Educators and received approval for a short course.
The very first course does not require any computers and can be done on cellphones or tablets, therefore there is no reason why it can not be started in rural areas as well.