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Primary School’s coding champs are unstoppable

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A team of coding enthusiasts from one small primary school in Nelson Mandela Bay is proving that passion and drive is all that is needed to be the best.

The coding team from Swartkops Primary School has recently been announced as the Top Primary School team, following their participation along with 6 000 other learners from nine provinces in South Africa, as well as Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia, in a #Coding4Mandela event earlier this year. The Swartkops Primary School team was also announced as the primary school winner of the Nelson Mandela Bay leg of the event.

Swartkops Primary School
Swartkops Primary School Technology teacher Victoria Olivier (left) and Tangible Africa Facilitator Trudie Didloff with Swartkops Primary School’s winning coding team: (from left) Itumeleng Mashigo, Chloë Siwisa, Indiphile Loli, Norman Msaka and Mvuyisi Luvuno.

Swartkops Primary School achieved the same score as the winning high school team from Chatsworth, Arena Park Secondary School, with 9 tokens and each winning school receives a winning prize of R10 000 sponsored by #AWSInCommunities.

Tangible Africa, an engagement project of the Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences Department and the Leva Foundation, hosted the #Coding4Mandela event, which was the biggest of the many other virtual and in-person coding tournaments hosted this year across the African region.

Learners participating in the tournaments are introduced to coding concepts, through coding games (downloadable as TANKS, RANGERS and BOATS Apps) which are played without the use of computers. All that is needed to play the offline coding games is a smart phone and coding kit.

Swartkops Primary School Technology teacher Victoria Olivier bough the school’s kit with her personal funds and started the coding club in 2020.

“Learners play after school; they organise their own transport and share phones with each other. We have renovated a space for them to play, and I can honestly say that the coding club team has done so well because of the learners’ passion for coding and robotics,” said Olivier.

Olivier allowed one of the learners – Norman Msaka – to take the school’s coding kit home in the December 2021 holidays, and when he returned to school this year, he was all fired up to compete in tournaments.

Msaka, who is currently in Grade 7 at Swartkops Primary School, did so well during this year’s tournaments that his talents were recognised by Tangible Africa and in May he received a bursary from Amazon vice-president David Brown to go to Alexander Road High School next year.

“All we want to do is make our teacher proud because she has done so much for us. We don’t want to disappoint her. I enjoy being good at coding, it’s a scarce skill, and I can just be myself in coding,” said Msaka.

The team also participated in Tangible Africa’s Heritage Month Virtual Tournament hosted recently, where 339 learners from 113 schools participated and Swartkops Primary again came first in the TANKS game.

“We are very happy that we won. As a team we support each other and coding has helped a lot with my self-confidence,” said another coding club team member, Itumeleng Mashigo, who is also in Grade 7.

For Swartkops Primary School Coding Club teammates Chloë Siwisa (Grade 6), and Mvuyisi Luvuno (Grade 7) one of the best parts about coding would be the teamwork and supportive environment it creates. And Indiphile Loli (Grade 7) plans to open a computer business one day, with the skills he acquired in coding.

Tangible Africa Facilitator Trudie Didloff is particularly proud of the school’s achievements following her first visit to the school for training in 2021. “They have done amazing, and we really couldn’t be prouder. We have been training teachers all over the country in all nine provinces since the Mandela Day event, demystifying the idea that you need a lot of technology and infrastructure to start coding,” said Didloff. To find out more about Tangible Africa, contact Prof Jean Greyling at Jean.Greyling@mandela.ac.za or Jackson Tshabalala at jackson@levafoundation.org.

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.