What are the best coding classes in Fingal?
Fingal is not a county, though it is often called one: it is one of the four local authorities that make up County Dublin, covering about 450 square kilometres from Blanchardstown and Castleknock up through Swords to Balbriggan and the coast. Its population was 330,506 at the 2022 census, and 159,994 of those people live inside the Dublin city and suburbs built-up area, which is roughly half of Fingal. It is young: Balbriggan's average age of 33.6 is among the lowest anywhere. We teach learners aged 6 to 67 live online at a fixed weekly hour, in ability groups of five to ten or one to one, with a free first lesson and then USD 100 a month in a group or USD 150 privately.
Fingal County Council publishes 419 datasets, far more than most Irish local authorities, and one of them counts visitors to Newbridge House in Donabate. It has 31 rows and looks completely ordinary. Add up its visitor column and you get 379,230 people. The true figure is 189,615, exactly half, because three of those 31 rows are not months at all: they are totals for 2021, 2022 and 2023, sitting in the same column as the data they summarise. Sum everything and you count every visitor twice, and the answer is not obviously wrong, because nothing about it looks odd. That is the most common way a published total goes astray, and it is almost invisible unless you look at the rows themselves. This page teaches that habit, on a file from the learner's own council.
Facts last verified 16 September 2026. Teaching is online; no Fingal branch is claimed.
Choose on what the learner wants to build rather than on age. Every card opens with a lesson that is free, real and taught by the person who would take the course.

Blocks and counting, where a scoreboard that includes its own total quickly starts telling lies.
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Python through the school years, with the habit of looking at rows before summing columns.
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A council file where the obvious sum is exactly double the right answer, and the reason is three rows.
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For working adults: automated checks that catch total rows, wrong coordinate units and closures recorded as zeros.
See the syllabusBrowse the course atlas for more than one hundred options and use the coding roadmap to check prerequisites.
The four we are known for
These run underneath everything above. Every one is live and online, placed by ability rather than by age, and the first class is free.

Python, web and AI projects where the learner still owns the thinking.
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Automate the work you already do, then let AI carry part of it.
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Train a model, read what it learned, and be able to say why it is wrong.
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Run AI coding agents on real work without losing control of the codebase.
See the syllabusBecause the statistics office publishes its Dublin commentary for the whole county at once, this page uses only figures that carry Fingal as their own row.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Population | 330,506 |
| Living inside the Dublin city and suburbs built-up area | 159,994, roughly half of Fingal |
| Largest electoral area | Howth and Malahide, 69,960, then Swords at 48,739 and Castleknock at 47,149 |
| Smallest electoral area | Blanchardstown and Mulhuddart, 40,022 |
| Densest electoral division | Blanchardstown and Blakestown, 5,576.3 people per square kilometre |
| Area, on the council's own description | About 450 square kilometres |
Swords is the largest at 40,776, then Balbriggan at 24,322, Malahide at 18,608, Rush at 10,875, Portmarnock at 10,750, Skerries at 10,743, Donabate at 9,669 and Lusk at 8,806.
Balbriggan has an average age of 33.6, among the youngest towns in the country, while Malahide sits at 40.5 and Swords between them at 36.2.
The council explains it plainly: Fingal comes from Fine Gall, the land of the fair-haired stranger, a reference to the Vikings who settled here.
Two notes about the numbers. Blanchardstown does not appear as a town in the census list at all, because it is administered across two electoral areas rather than existing as a single settlement, so no single Blanchardstown population is quoted here. And the census town list labels Fingal's towns as County Dublin, a naming convention that predates the 1994 split into four authorities. It is not an error, and it is a good early lesson in how administrative history survives inside data long after the administration has changed.
Fingal did better than anywhere else we have written about when Leaving Certificate Computer Science began in September 2018.
Loreto College and St Finian's Community College, both in the largest town in the authority, were on the January 2018 list.
St Joseph's Secondary School in Rush, plus Coláiste Pobail Setanta in Phibblestown, Le Chéile Secondary School in Tyrellstown and Luttrellstown Community College in Blanchardstown.
Mount Temple Comprehensive has a Malahide Road address, which sounds like Fingal and is not: the school sits in Dublin 3, in the city. Road names are not addresses.
That last point is the sort of thing worth teaching early. We placed each school by comparing its address against the council's own published list of Fingal areas, which names Balbriggan, Baldoyle, Balgriffin, Ballyboughal, Blanchardstown, Castleknock, Clonsilla, Donabate, Garristown, Howth, Loughshinny, Lusk, Malahide, Mulhuddart, Naul, Oldtown, Portmarnock, Rush, Santry, Skerries, Sutton and Swords. Guessing from a road name or a postal district would have put at least one school in the wrong place, and a learner who has done this exercise on their own neighbourhood will never again assume that two addresses containing the same word are near each other.
What we cannot tell you about Fingal
The statistics office publishes no Fingal-specific figures for citizenship, working from home, commuting mode or third-level education. Only a Dublin-wide release exists, covering all four authorities together. Rather than pass those off as Fingal numbers, we leave them out and say why. An absent figure, clearly labelled, is worth more than a borrowed one.
Thirty-one rows, one column, and an answer that is precisely twice what it should be. This is the most valuable half hour a new data learner can spend.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Rows in the file | 31 |
| Rows that are actually totals rather than months | 3, labelled for 2021, 2022 and 2023 |
| Sum of the visitor column across all 31 rows | 379,230 |
| Sum across the 28 genuine rows | 189,615 |
| The difference | 189,615, which is the correct total counted a second time |
| Rows recording zero visitors because the site was closed | 4, during 2021 closures |
They look identical to data. No tool warns you, the column adds up cleanly, and the answer is wrong by a factor that depends entirely on how many total rows are present.
The file carries an X and Y pair in projected metres, and a separate latitude and longitude in degrees. Plot the first pair on a map and your point lands in the ocean.
Four months show zero visitors because the house was shut during Covid restrictions. Averaging without excluding them understates a normal month and tells you nothing true about demand.
The reporting granularity changes partway through: months in 2021 and 2022, quarters from 2023 onwards, with no column marking the switch, so an unwary comparison puts a three-month figure beside a one-month one. And the visitor column's own name is misspelled in the published header, which matters more than it sounds: any code that refers to the correctly spelled name simply fails to find the column, and a learner who assumes the tidy spelling will spend an hour debugging their own perfectly good code. Published files carry their authors' typing, and the fix is always to read the header rather than to assume it.
The output is a corrected total, a note of which rows were excluded and why, and a short list of everything else found. The number is less important than the list.
These take a minute each and catch the errors that survive into finished reports.
| Check | What you look for | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| Read the rows, not just the header | Labels like total, subtotal, all or year-end inside a data column | Totals counted as data |
| Sanity-test the scale | Whether the answer is suspiciously round, or suspiciously double | Exactly the fault on this page |
| Check units before mapping | Whether coordinates are degrees or metres | Points landing in the sea |
| Ask what a zero means | Whether zero is a real measurement or a closure | Averages dragged down by shut doors |
| Check the grain | Whether every row covers the same length of time | Quarters compared with months |
A scoreboard game that accidentally includes its own total, so the score doubles and the players have to work out why.
The real council file in Python: find the three total rows, correct the sum, check the coordinates and write up what changed.
The same checks on work spreadsheets, where subtotal rows pasted into data are the single most common cause of a wrong figure in a report.
We have no connection with Fingal County Council, daa, Malahide Castle, Newbridge House or any school named on this page. Population figures come from Central Statistics Office tables that name Fingal directly, and the dataset measurements are ours, taken from the council's published file under its Creative Commons Attribution licence.
Fingal holds the country's main airport, its own shoreline and a great deal of the Dublin commuter belt.
The largest single site in the authority. Its operator states an ambition to deliver "coherent, sustainable and plan-led growth of Dublin Airport to 40 million passengers per annum", which is a planning aim rather than a current figure.
At K36 YP65, home to the Talbot family for over 800 years, and now one of the busiest visitor attractions in north County Dublin.
At K36 VR90 in Donabate, a Georgian villa designed by James Gibbs and built from 1747, whose demesne passed to the council in 1985 under an unusual agreement leaving the family's collection in place.
A tidy piece of arithmetic
Unlike several counties we have written about, Fingal's parts add up perfectly: its seven electoral areas sum to exactly 330,506, and so do its 42 electoral divisions. When a hierarchy reconciles on the first attempt, that is worth noticing too, because it means you can use either level with confidence.
Ages are a guide. Placement is decided in the free lesson by what the learner can actually do.
Programs that add things up and notice when something has been counted twice.
Coding for KidsScratch Coding for KidsOpening real files, reading the header as published and looking at rows before trusting a column.
Python and AI for KidsMaths Through CodingFinding embedded totals, fixing a sum, checking coordinate units and writing up the corrections.
Data Science for TeensPython for TeensChecks that run on every new file, so a subtotal row never reaches a report again.
Python Automation CourseData and AI Analytics for Non-Programmers (Excel, Sheets, Power BI)Because the wrong answer is exactly double, and nothing about it looks wrong.
Hand an AI tool this file and ask how many people visited. It will sum the column and answer 379,230, confidently and quickly. The three rows holding yearly totals are indistinguishable from data unless something reads their labels and reasons about what they mean. The tool has done accurate arithmetic on the wrong set of rows, which is the most dangerous kind of mistake because the output carries no sign of it.
A learner who has met this once develops the right reflex: before summing anything, look at what the rows are. It takes seconds, and it is the difference between a total you can put your name to and one you cannot.
So the case for a Fingal child learning to code in 2026 is not that the airport is up the road. It is that somebody in every organisation has to be able to say that total counts itself, and show which three rows did it. The longer argument is in why a child should still learn to code in 2026.
Fingal stretches from the edge of the city to the north county coast, and its traffic is famous. A class that arrives at the house avoids all of it.
A learner in Garristown and one in Castleknock join the same class, which no room in either place could arrange on a weekday evening.
Junior Cycle, Transition Year, fifth and sixth year, spoken the way Fingal schools speak them.
A real task, a real teacher, and a clear recommendation at the end. Nobody is asked for card details to take it.
Five to ten learners at one level, gathered from Fingal and several other countries so that each level meets at a sensible hour.
Usually two lessons a week, around eight a month, with mid-terms, exams and holidays planned around in advance.
Indian time holds steady while Irish time moves, so our teachers are four and a half hours ahead in summer and five and a half in winter.
A young population, and what it needs
With Balbriggan among the youngest towns in Ireland at an average age of 33.6, Fingal has a great many primary-age children arriving at once. Our youngest classes start at six with block coding, which is the right entry point for exactly that group.
The price, in three lines.
One full lesson at no charge, ending with a level named and a course recommended.
A month of classes, normally eight, shared with five to ten learners of similar ability.
The same month of classes, with the teacher working with a single learner.
Billing is monthly in US dollars at the one rate charged outside India, so Skerries pays what Mulhuddart pays and there is no euro list. Nothing is charged until the free lesson has produced a course and a weekly hour, and pauses, missed lessons and format changes are set out on the pricing page.
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We match the first task to the person: a counting game for a young child, a first file opened in code for the middle years, or the doubled total for a teenager.
What families in north County Dublin ask.
Not exactly. It is one of the four local authorities that make up County Dublin, covering about 450 square kilometres from Blanchardstown and Castleknock north to Balbriggan and the coast.
Census 2022 counted 330,506, of whom 159,994 live inside the Dublin city and suburbs built-up area. Swords is the largest town at 40,776.
Six were on the January 2018 first-phase list: Loreto College and St Finian's in Swords, St Joseph's in Rush, and Coláiste Pobail Setanta, Le Chéile and Luttrellstown Community College in Dublin 15.
Students take the council's Newbridge House visitor file, discover that three of its 31 rows are yearly totals, and find that the obvious sum of 379,230 is exactly double the true 189,615.
Because the statistics office publishes none for Fingal alone. Only a Dublin-wide release exists, covering all four local authorities, and we will not present those numbers as Fingal's.
It is a naming convention that predates the 1994 division of the old county into four authorities. The label is historical rather than wrong, and it is a good example of administrative history surviving inside data.
Afternoons, evenings and weekend mornings. Our teachers are four and a half hours ahead of Irish time in summer and five and a half in winter, and the weekly slot is fixed during the free lesson.
No, and we never suggest one. All teaching happens live over video, with no premises in Ireland at all. A learner needs a laptop or desktop, sound that works and a steady connection, and the number on this page belongs to India.
The first lesson is free. After that, a shared place costs USD 100 a month and brings two live lessons a week, roughly eight monthly, with five to ten learners; one-to-one on the same schedule is USD 150 a month. Course, format and hour are agreed before payment.
Five to ten, grouped by ability, pace and goal rather than by age or address. Where nothing suitable runs at a workable hour, we teach one to one instead.
The city itself is at Dublin, and south of it Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown has its own page. Inland, County Meath and County Kildare border Fingal's commuter towns. Everything is gathered on the Ireland coding page.