Boosting Digital Skills of young pupils, in particular girls

Overview

Objectives

Selected projects should aim to scale up the EU Code Week initiative to promote computational thinking and coding to as many people as possible, focusing particularly on young people, teachers and schools.

The second objective is to put a strong emphasis on boosting the digital skills of young people, particularly of girls, to encourage them to pursue studies in STEM disciplines and take up a career in ICT.

Activities/actions supported

Supported activities under this call include:

• Managing the network of volunteer EU Code Week ambassadors, as well as volunteer leading teachers and coordinators at the education ministries or other educational authorities and organisations;
• Expanding the volunteer network by focusing more on attracting a younger audience (students and young professionals) to contribute to the initiative by organising activities and supporting communication actions around Code Week;
• Managing the wider community of tens of thousands of teachers and coding enthusiasts and incentivising them to organise, register and participate in EU Code Week activities
• Running year-round innovative communication and engagement campaigns at European and national level (including paid promotion campaigns and working with influencers), taking care of existing (and possibly new) EU Code Week social media channel, taking into account the social media audit performed in 202320, as well as developing, procuring and sending out goodies (e.g. t-shirts, bags, etc.) and taking care of the existing email mailboxes;
• Upskilling, training and empowering teachers as well as school leaders in the areas of coding, computational thinking, digital literacy and the wider field of digital education via a multitude of activity types, such as MOOCs, TeachDays, study groups, webinars, etc.;
• Incentivising schools and teachers to become active in EU Code Week (including via upscaling the Code Week School Label, providing grants to schools/teachers to organise initiatives/events at local level, etc.);
• Developing, managing and maintaining the EU Code Week website, supporting multilingual content and interaction, including translating new content into 29 languages27, as well as improving the website taking into account the UX audit performed in 202328, as well as a proposal how to implement gamification mechanics on the website, and taking into account security assessment performed in 2023;
• Providing accessible and easy-to-use resources, including coding challenges, learning bits, videos, and podcasts in English;
• Strengthening the network of coordinators at the education ministries or other educational authorities and organisations;
• Providing support to the national networks to strengthen the cooperation and collaboration at national level between ambassadors, leading teachers and coordinators at the education ministries or other educational authorities and organisations, where needed;
• Facilitating cross-country collaborations between ambassadors, leading teachers and coordinators at the education ministries or other educational authorities and organisations from different participating countries in order to encourage implementation of joint Code Week activities and sharing of best practices;
• Managing existing relations with EU Code Week partners and building up new partnerships with key stakeholders and involving them in back-to-school visits in which companies and organisations lend their staff to schools or coding clubs for Code Week activities;
• Developing new and innovative Code Week elements;
• Conducting accompanying impact studies to demonstrate how participation in Code Week activities impacts pupils’ learning outcomes and acquired digital skills;
• Providing high quality documentation for a possible handover of the EU Code Week initiative as well as the EU Code Week website after the end of the project duration.

Anticipated outcomes

Anticipated outcomes include stronger cooperation between primary, secondary and VET schools and tertiary education and research to increase the number of pupils enrolling in digital studies aiming at gender convergence. This will lead to the development of:

• Summer schools
• Specialised information and career days
• Dissemination and outreach activities, such as EU Code Week

Institution providing the funding

European Commission

Size of funding

€6.000.000

Conditions

Overview of eligibility criteria

To be eligible, applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must be legal entities (public or private bodies) established in one of the eligible countries (i.e.: EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)); non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme (associated countries) or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature).

The selected consortium for this proposal should be composed of a minimum of four applicants from four different eligible countries, each taking over the leading role in one of the following pillars of activities:

• Education, pedagogy and community building
• Communication and social media channels
• Information system development and management
• Impact assessment

More information is available in the text of the call (see link below).

Overview of award criteria

The award criteria are the following:

• Relevance (5 points)
• Implementation (5 points)
• Impact (5 points)

Maximum points: 15 points. Overall threshold: 10 points.

Procedures

Application procedures

To be considered, proposals must:

• Be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal using the forms provided.
• Proposals must be complete and contain all parts and mandatory annexes and supporting documents.

More information is available in the text of the call (see link below).

Application support available

For help related to this call, please use the contact form available here: https://european-union.europa.eu/contact-eu/write-us_en

Useful links

Link to funding opportunity

Link to the programme for more info