Raspberry Pi Foundation merges with Code Club

UK organisations the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Code Club have merged in a bid to get more children into coding.

Code Club, which creates education programmes for volunteers across the UK to teach at after school coding clubs, will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The organisation has said that despite the merger, it won’t change the way it operates, and still aims to put a code club in every school in the UK.

For Raspberry PI however, which develops the cheap micro-computer of the same name, the deal is part of its plans to extend its educational programmes and reach more children.

To date, its credit card-sized computer has sold more than seven million units. Code Club meanwhile has 3,153 clubs in the UK teaching more than 44,000 children how to program.

“A lot of our work focuses on the Raspberry Pi computer as a tool for education (and it always will), but our mission and activities are much broader than that, and many of our programmes, like Code Club, are designed to be platform-neutral," said Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Philip Colligan.

“Personally, I’m really excited about working more closely with Code Club and helping them grow. I’ve been a big fan of their work for a long time, and over the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to visit Code Clubs across the country. I’ve been blown away by the energy and enthusiasm of the teachers, volunteers and young people involved.”