Coding queen: 70,000 children sign up to course run by student as she does A-levels

A London schoolgirl has set up her own charity while studying for her A-levels and has already helped teach more than 70,000 children in India how to code.

Mahek Vara, 17, a pupil at £28,000-a-year Westminster School, started Code Camp after being shocked at the poor facilities in many government schools in India.

Her charity has so far provided computer coding lessons to more than 1,800 schools in Gujarat state, and she plans to expand it into the Gulf and Sri Lanka.

Mahek, who wants to study maths and computing at university, realised that a knowledge of computer programming is an essential skill for working life and set about designing a programme to teach the subject in India.

A team of Code Camp volunteers, including Mahek, have taught the course to tens of thousands of children. She is now designing a gap year programme for British students in a bid to boost the number of volunteers. She said: “I set up the charity primarily for government schools in India because I believe students don’t have the same opportunities that we have here. I am originally from India and used to go there every year. Last year I had longer holidays for Christmas and Easter so I spent more time there. I realised there was a need for computer education. There are computers in schools but a lot of technical difficulties. They haven’t been updated — so if there are six computers, five won’t work.”

Mahek started to learn coding herself last year as part of her A-levels and was inspired to share her knowledge.

She said: “I started creating sample resources for Code Camp myself. I started personally coding last year for my Extended Project Qualification so as a novice in coding I was in a prime position.” After writing beginner, intermediate and advanced lessons in coding, Mahek launched her charity in April last year when she was just 16. She began by leading classes in India last July and trained more than 100 teachers herself.

She was able to expand the programme to hundreds of schools with the help of the Gujarat education ministry. Now there are more than 30 Code Camp volunteers who teach Indian pupils and train school staff so that they can teach the course themselves.

Mahek, who went to Langley grammar school before Westminster, said combining setting up the charity with schoolwork was a “tough schedule”. So as her A-level exams in maths, further maths, physics and economics approach she has reduced the amount of time she spends on it to two hours a week.

She also wants to run events to encourage more girls to take up STEM subjects in science, technology, engineering and maths.