Apple's code teaching scheme soars in Europe

Apple has revealed 70 colleges and universities have signed up to its "Everyone Can Code" scheme, which aims to teach young people how to create apps for iOS using its Swift programming language.

Educational establishments in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal are all now giving students the opportunity to learn Apple's development curriculum to encourage young people to enter the world of app development.

In the UK, Harlow College in Essex is offering all 3,000 of its students, including adults attending its courses, help to find new employment by introducing app development as a potential career choice.

“At Harlow College, we recognise that learning to code will help students prepare for a technological future. It develops their approach to problem solving, logic and reasoning, as well as reinforcing key mathematical skills,” said Karen Spencer, principal of Harlow College.

“Everyone Can Code demonstrates how any student can code by providing a unique and innovative environment for learning.”

Other universities and colleges taking part in the programme and highlighted by Apple include the Technical University of Munich in Germany, which is focusing on using Swift with Apple's ARKit, Mercantec Vocational College in Denmark and Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

“Coding is an essential skill for today’s workforce, and through Everyone Can Code, we’re giving people around the world the power to learn, write and teach coding,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

“Since launching Everyone Can Code two years ago, we’ve seen growing excitement for the initiative from schools around the world, who are increasingly incorporating the curriculum into their classrooms.”

Apple's Swift curriculum was first introduced in early 2017, which was almost immediately picked up by six community college systems catering for 500,000 students in the US. An expansion to the program would see an additional 30 colleges adopt the system before becoming available internationally.