Computer Science is part of the English National Curriculum at all levels, and is taught as part of the school curriculum in most countries. There is a mind-boggling range of educational websites and apps out there to support children with learning coding - from the very basics to the more complex.

If you have kids who would like to reinforce their skills or learn new ones - there is almost too much to choose from. And with the current Corovirus outbreak, many companies are offering their services for free or at reduced rates.

Here are a just a few that are aimed at helping kids start coding, or developing particular coding skills, and are offering free resources:

Hour of code

A fantastic site that allows children to access a one-hour tutorial designed in over 45 languages. A brilliant selection of fun projects for all ages, with great video tutorials and support on the page as children learn the building blocks of code.

With schools closed, they have also launched Code Break - a live, weekly interactive classroom where the code.org team will teach children at home while school is closed, and a weekly challenge to engage kids. 

Code Break is live every Wednesday at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET / 5:00pm BST

Khan Academy: Computer programming

Aimed at ages 11/12+, there is a great range of longer courses for developing particular computing skills. For example, Intro to JavaScript: Drawing & Animation, Intro to HTML/CSS: Making webpages, to Advanced JavaScript: Games & Visualizations and HTML/JS: Making webpages interactive with jQuery

They also deliver courses for maths, science & engineering, and arts & humanities, as well as offering Khan Academy Kids - a free app for children aged two to seven years.

EduCode Academy

Currently offering two month's free access to their courses (offer ends May 31 2020).

EduCode provide several hundred projects under the headings JavaScript Programming, Game Development, Web Development, and Data Science using the four steps: Watch - Code - Get feedback - Keep discovering.

They also provide introductory projects eg: My First Coding Lessons and Introduction to Programming.

Tynker

Tynker claim to have over 3,700 fun modules for 5 year olds to 14+. Again, there are a huge range of different types of very interactive self-paced learning courses - with a large number now available free for home-schooling.

Free courses include:

Glitch Manor — An immersive point and click adventure where students explore a haunted mansion, fight off zombies, and solve mysteries with code.

Augmented Reality — A fun course where students learn to build games with webcams using gestures and video special effects.

Python — A game-based introduction to Python where students guide a warrior through a jungle maze and build classic arcade-style games.