Kids coding studio, Code Ninjas, Newbury, is pleased to be celebrating its three year anniversary. The popular game-building and coding destination for Newbury children opened its doors for the first time back in April 2021. For owner, Marcus Brind, and his team, this is a significant achievement that they’re all looking forward to celebrating.

“As we celebrate three years of igniting young minds, I’m so proud of how far we’ve come,” said Marcus. “We’ve welcomed hundreds of children from the local community through our doors since we opened. It’s been incredibly rewarding to witness not only their confidence in their coding abilities, but also their communication skills have come on leaps and bounds since they started coming along to our sessions.

“As a testament to the success of our programme, we’re marking our third anniversary by sharing news of the very recent and significant achievements of two of our students – we call them ninjas – in particular. Both Edward Terry, 11, and Charlie Fox, 15, have been awarded their coding black belts!”

Edward and Charlie – who have both been attending Code Ninjas since it opened – have worked through the brand’s rigorous curriculum, earning them the esteemed black belt status. Incredibly, they are two of only a handful of black belt ninjas in the country.

“I’m over the moon for both of them – they’ve both worked so hard,” added Marcus. “I’m so pleased to have supported them in their coding journeys. They both represent everything that Code Ninjas stands for – commitment, creativity and passion – and I’m very proud to congratulate them.”

To reach black belt status at Code Ninjas, Edward and Charlie worked through nine courses of the programme, including JavaScript, Lua in Roblox, and C# in Unity. To achieve the black belt, each of them then had to create their own game, which is now downloadable for the public to access and play.

Edward’s mum, Tatiana, is elated with the progress he has made during his weekly coding sessions. “As you can imagine, Edward is extremely proud of himself – as are we! He’s been going along for a two-hour session every Saturday since Code Ninjas opened on London Road. He’s always enjoyed working with computers, so it seemed a great idea to pursue his interests – it’s something I’ve always encouraged as coding is a very useful skill to learn.

“I can’t thank Marcus and the team enough for their support – they’ve always been so encouraging of Edward’s love of tech and are extremely knowledgeable. They’ve obviously had quite the impact on Edward, as the whole experience has confirmed his choice of undertaking Computer Studies in senior school and possibly even at university!”

At Code Ninjas, kids learn how to code in a safe, inclusive and social learning environment where gaming is celebrated and STEM is cool. Code Ninjas allows kids to dive into fun, challenging and rewarding projects and activities that will engage them and bring out skill sets that will benefit them as they grow. Building the game at the end is an impressive feat and requires a lot of focus and effort to implement all that was learned in the previous eight belts.

Like Edward, Charlie has always had a passion for gaming, IT and coding. Kay Wilson, Charlie’s mum, has been proudly celebrating his black belt status since Marcus revealed the news. “We were absolutely thrilled to hear that he was the fourth ninja in the UK to achieve black belt status – he’s worked so hard to reach this goal. The best part about the whole programme is that he never feels like it’s a chore; he’s just having fun whilst harnessing a skill that I believe will support him throughout the rest of his formal education and into the workplace. Everyone is so very proud of him and the hard work that he has done. I couldn’t be happier for him.”

“The course was really fun and gradually built up my knowledge and confidence,” added Charlie. “I know this will be a good foundation for the AS and A Level Computer Science that I’m taking from September.”

Marcus and the team are looking forward to crowning their next black belt ninja very soon! 

Author: Penny Post

Penny Post is a community notice board serving West Berkshire, Wantage, Swindon, Marlborough and surrounding areas so there