Teacher shortage

Shenzhen-based Codemao is taking advantage of parents' enthusiasm for coding by providing online graphical programming courses for students ages 6 to 16. It also provides an online platform where children can write programs for games and animation and display their creations.

It starts with teaching kindergarten or primary school students the basic ideas of coding through game-playing experience, with guidance from cartoon characters and graphic instructional tools shaped like blocks. Then it gradually grows into algorithms, data structure and programming languages.

Li Tianchi, the co-founder and CEO of Codemao, said he and his partner started the company in 2015 when they noticed that some countries had already added coding as a subject in their schools.

Coding is becoming a basic subject for students and has already been put into primary curricula in the US and some European countries, Li said.

"Children have a lot of creativity, and programming is a useful path to creation, helping them turn their ideas into reality," he said.

Codemao has around 2 million users, and its products are available on both smartphones and computers, Li said.

In the past, computer lessons focused on basic skills and knowledge such as document processing and learning to use existing software, such as Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, he said.

"It was about how to work a computer, not how a computer works and how to make it work for us," Li said, adding that Codemao aimed to make coding as simple and interesting for children as building with toy blocks.

He said the main difficulty in promoting coding education is that only a few teachers understand both coding and education.

"It's not a problem only in China, but worldwide, as outstanding computer professionals are sought by companies with high salaries," Li said. "Schools cannot offer such high pay."

Li Huiyu, head of the coding department at Mobby, said more parents are realizing that coding is as important today as English was in the past three decades while students think of coding as an interest rather than another cram subject.

The world will need more new coding talent as computers and AI replace humans to some extent, he said, adding that the efficiency of AI had already been proved and the technology is influencing lots of areas.

Coding students are also learning logical thinking and how to apply their knowledge to physics, archaeology, aerospace and other subjects, Li Huiyu said.

"They are no longer addicted to online games, but are learners, thinkers and creators," he said. "Learning to code isn't about becoming a programmer－it's the key to the future."