Coding for Home Educated Children
Coding that fits around home education, for children aged 6 to 16. Structured enough to count as your computing strand, flexible enough that nothing is missed if you have a bad week.
Home educating parents tell us the same thing often enough that it is worth saying out loud: the child has not gone off computers. They have lost the structure and they have lost the other children who were into the same thing. The interest is still there, and it usually has nowhere to go except more screen time.
That is the gap we are useful for. We are not a curriculum provider and we are not a school replacement. We run coding for children who want to make games, with a real mentor attached, in a shape that works when there is no timetable telling you where to be.
Two ways in
Game Dev Academy, for structure without a fixed slot
Self-paced, so there is no session to miss and nothing to catch up on. Your child works through levelled projects in Scratch at their own speed, and a STEM-certified, DBS-checked mentor answers by text and video message when they get stuck or want to show off what they built.
- Levels are real steps. Each one finishes with a STEM-certified certificate, so there is a record of progress you can point at.
- A new featured game every week, the same build the live clubs are working on, ready whenever your child opens it.
- Minecraft Mod Worlds, their own world to mod with real code.
- Seasonal Game Jams, where everyone plays what the others made.
- Race ahead over a wet fortnight, or leave it alone for a month. Neither breaks anything.
The Academy is £25 a month and you can cancel with 30 days notice. There is no free taster on the Academy, because there is no session to sit in on. What there is instead is a month, and nothing that makes it awkward to stop after it.
Game Dev Club, for the other half of what is missing
A live weekly hour with the same mentor every week and a maximum of six children. For a lot of home educating families this is the part that matters more than the coding: an hour a week with other children who are into exactly the same thing, which is a much shorter list than it was when they were in school.
Clubs are £65 a month, run online and in person across Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and start with a free taster session. A mentor phones you before the taster to work out which group actually suits your child, rather than dropping them into whichever one has a space.
Online clubs run in the school day as well as after it, which for home educating families is usually the part that matters. Times are further down this page.
Daytime clubs, in the school day
Most live clubs run after school and in the evening, because that is when children who are at school are free. Home educated children are not, so we run daytime clubs online as well.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 1:30pm, term time, online. Same shape as every other club: one hour, the same mentor every week, a maximum of six children, and a free taster first.
These are not a pilot and they are not a favour. Around 150 children were in our daytime sessions last term, which is the ordinary way a good number of our home educating families use us. They also tend to have a little more room in them than the evening groups, so if the after school clubs are full when you ask, the daytime ones often are not.
If a different day or time would suit you better, say so when you book the taster. Daytime demand is what decides which slots we add next, and at the moment we would rather hear it from you than guess.
"Our nearly 10yo AuDHD child has always enjoyed coding, computer games and tech, but since being Home Educated has missed out. Having found The Code Zone, and especially Lauren his mentor, he has been super happy to be back to coding and making games again."
Does it count towards our provision?
An honest answer, because this gets asked and a vague one wastes your time.
It is not an accredited course and it is not a full computer science curriculum. Nobody is awarding a qualification at the end of it.
What it does give you is a structure you can evidence. Levels with defined steps, a STEM-certified certificate at the end of each one, a dated record of the projects your child has built, and work they can show and talk about. Families use it as the computing and creative technology part of what they are doing, alongside everything else. If you are writing an educational philosophy or putting a report together, that is the honest shape of it.
If your child is autistic, ADHD or both
A good number of the families we work with came to home education because school stopped working, and the child is autistic, ADHD, or both. More than a third of our members are neurodivergent, which is what parents have told us rather than a figure we have counted ourselves.
Some of what follows from that:
- Nobody has to speak. Mentors will happily take everything by message, in the clubs as well as the Academy. That has been somebody's whole way of taking part for years at a time.
- Cameras off is fine. So is joining and not saying anything.
- Nothing is forced, and moving down a level is as ordinary as moving up. Groups get changed because groups differ in character, not because a child is wrong.
- The demand is low by design. There is no homework, nothing to prepare, and no consequence for a week off. For a child with a PDA profile, the Academy in particular asks almost nothing of them until they choose to open it.
We hold the National Autistic Society's Autism Inclusion Award, given in 2025 for how the sessions actually support autistic members. There is more detail on our neurodivergent support page.
What to do next
- Start the Academy if self-paced with a mentor on the end of a message is the shape you want.
- Book a free club taster if the weekly hour and the other five children is the part you are after.
- Compare the memberships if you want the two side by side.
- Email info@thecodezone.co.uk or call 0333 090 5697 if you would rather just ask somebody.
FAQ
Yes. Our online clubs run on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 1:30pm in term time, and they are ordinary clubs rather than a leftover slot: one live hour, never more than six children, the same mentor every week, and the same projects the after-school groups are building. They run every week of term. If a different day or time would suit you better, say so when you book a taster, because daytime demand is what decides which slot we open next.
In a small online club with the same handful of children each week, which is the part of school that is hardest to replace. Our daytime clubs cap at six children, run Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 1:30pm, and keep the same group and the same mentor together week after week, so it stops being a room of strangers by about the second session. They play each other's games, borrow each other's ideas, and everyone plays everything at our seasonal Game Jams. Camera off and typing in the chat is completely fine.
Families use it as their computing and creative technology strand, and it gives you plenty to point at: levels with defined steps, a STEM-certified certificate at the end of each one, a dated record of every project your child has finished, and the games themselves, which your child can open and talk a reviewer through. That last one tends to do more than any paperwork. There is no formal qualification at the end of it, so if an accredited course is what you need, this is not that.
Six to sixteen. The Game Dev Academy and the Game Dev Club both run 6 to 16. Game Dev Advanced, which is text-based coding in Python, TypeScript and JavaScript, is 10 and over.
Game Dev Academy is £25 a month, self-paced with a mentor answering by text and video message. Game Dev Club is £65 a month for a live weekly hour in a group of six. Both cancel with 30 days notice, and there are discounts for paying in three, six or twelve month blocks on the live club memberships. The club starts with a free taster session and no card is needed. The Academy has no taster, because there is no session to sit in on.
Often, yes, and it is ordinary here rather than something your child has to be brave about. More than a third of our members are neurodivergent, which is what parents have told us rather than a figure we counted ourselves, and every mentor is trained in supporting neurodivergent children. Your child can take part entirely by typing, and plenty do. Cameras stay off if that suits. The first fifteen minutes of a taster are one-to-one, so they meet their mentor before they meet a group, and moving down a level is as ordinary as moving up. The self-paced Academy asks nothing of a child until they choose to open it, which matters for a PDA profile. We hold the National Autistic Society's Autism Inclusion Award, 2025.
Nothing that needs catching up. Tell us and we will move your child into another slot that week, and if you would rather just skip it, the projects are still there whenever they come back. Home ed weeks are not all the same shape and the club is built to survive that.
