Coding and AI classes in Wales

Ages 6 to 10

Scratch Coding for Kids

A first language, where a child builds something that works and can explain how, which is what the Welsh progression steps are built around.

See the syllabus

Ages 10 to 13

Python and AI for Kids

Typed Python before the GCSE starts, so that Year 10 is spent on problems rather than on syntax.

See the syllabus

Ages 13 to 17

Python for Teens

The language the Welsh Unit 2 examination is written in, taught until a student can produce a working program with nothing to copy from.

See the syllabus

Adults

Data and AI Analytics for Non-Programmers (Excel, Sheets, Power BI)

For grown-ups who want the vocabulary their children are being taught, without becoming programmers.

See the syllabus

Browse the course atlas for more than one hundred options and use the coding roadmap to check prerequisites.

Vibe codingAges 13 to 17

Vibe Coding for Teens

Python, web and AI projects where the learner still owns the thinking.

See the syllabus

Python and AICollege and adult

Python Automation Course

Automate the work you already do, then let AI carry part of it.

See the syllabus

AI and MLAges 14 to 18

AI and Machine Learning for Teens

Train a model, read what it learned, and be able to say why it is wrong.

See the syllabus

Agentic codingProfessionals

Codex & Claude Code

Run AI coding agents on real work without losing control of the codebase.

See the syllabus

Read the assessment objectives across the two columns and the design becomes obvious. Unit 1 carries all of the recall: thirty per cent of the whole qualification is AO1, demonstrating knowledge. Unit 2 carries none of it. Every mark in Unit 2 is for applying and analysing, which is to say for writing and refining a program while somebody watches the clock.

That is why "no optionality and no tiering" matters more here than it sounds. Every candidate in Wales sits the same paper, and half of the qualification is a practical exercise that cannot be revised for in the ordinary sense.

The qualification is unitised, so Unit 1 can be taken before the final year while Unit 2 cannot. For a school that means the theory and the programming can be separated in time, and for a family it means a Year 10 who is behind on Python still has a year to fix it.

Alongside it, WJEC has a second qualification: GCSE Digital Technology, teaching from 2026 with a first award in 2028. A school may offer either, and they are not the same subject.

One consequence worth naming for parents: because Unit 2 is assessed on screen in Python, a Welsh student who has only ever used block-based coding arrives at a disadvantage that has nothing to do with ability. The gap is keyboard fluency in one specific language, and it closes in a term.

ONS puts the population of Wales at 3,107,500 on census day, 21 March 2021, and warns that its rounded figures "may not add exactly because of this rounding". The twenty principal areas above are reproduced as the census publishes them and are deliberately not totalled here, because adding published parts to assert a whole is how a tidy sentence turns into a false one. What the distribution shows is clear enough without arithmetic: Cardiff and Swansea together are under a fifth of the country, and the rest is spread down valleys and along coastline where a class within driving distance is a genuine constraint.

A learner in Ceredigion or on Anglesey has the same teacher, at the same hour, as one in Cardiff. That is the whole argument, and it is a stronger one here than in most places.

We teach in English. Welsh-medium and bilingual education is a substantial part of Welsh schooling and we are not equipped to teach through Welsh, which we would rather say plainly than leave a family to discover.

Everything else about the offer is as elsewhere: the UK page lists every page in this series, and the competitions calendar covers what a Welsh pupil can enter.