Over 337 schools across the six educational districts in Lagos are set to slug it out in a four-day coding competition, Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mr Obafela Bank-Olemoh said on Thursday.
In a statement, Bank-Olemoh said that participants will include students from Government and private schools across the state who will be exposed to the world of computer programming.
He said the four-day competition tagged Code Lagos which will kick off on Monday, June 25, was designed to further encourage the use of a wider range of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills within the school curriculum and raise ICT standards among Lagos state schools.
“CodeLagos is a response to the mandate of His Excellency, Governor Akinwumi Ambode to prepare Lagos residents for the technology-driven future.
“Our intention through this competition is to foster problem-solving and algorithmic thinking abilities among these students by simulating real-case problem-solving scenarios. By so doing, we will position our students for the 21st-century workforce. We will also identify talented young programmers and help nurture their skills and expertise.”
Speaking further, Bank-Olemoh said the Lagos Code Week would commence with a preliminary competition among CodeLagos schools in each of the six Educational Districts in the State.
He also noted that each participating school whether government or private-owned would be represented by a team of up to three contestants who would be required to respond to a coding-related design challenge.
According to him, besides the competition, over 1,340 Lagos residents are currently being trained in the third session of the CodeLagos out-of-School programme holding in 12 centres across the State.
He said centres are located in Ikeja, Ipaja and Yaba among others adding that before the year runs out, more programmes will be held across the state.
“Before the end of 2018, we would have set up 1500 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,” Bank-Olemoh said.