This National Coding Week comes at a precarious moment for Britain. To some onlookers, the economy has flatlined, wages have stagnated, and frustrations are spilling over into every corner of public life. Politicians and business leaders often point to quick wins – AI partnerships, glossy announcements, or a new wave of tech investment – as signs of progress. But beneath the headlines lies a structural weakness that no headline or partnership can fix: an economy overly reliant on London’s financial services and an education system that treats learning as something you finish at eighteen. Millions of people are left without the tools to adapt as industries shift under their feet, unable to re-enter the labour market with the skills the modern economy demands.
Why is this relevant to National Coding Week? Because coding, or better expressed as computational thinking, or solving problems with computers, should be at the heart of the conversation, and it’s not. Far from being a niche reserved for software engineers, coding is the new literacy of work, underpinning everything from logistics and healthcare to creative industries and government services. It is the expression of computational thinking – the ability to deconstruct problems, test solutions, and design systems – that is becoming just as important as reading and arithmetic. Yet access to this literacy remains limited. As long as Britain’s education system sidelines lifelong learning, the country risks creating a two-tier society: those with the ability to shape and deploy modern tools, and those left waiting for the benefits to trickle down. The real crisis hiding in plain sight is not AI’s speed, but the nation’s lack of readiness to keep up.
The diagnosis: A broken learning arc
Over the past two decades, Britain’s economic growth has leaned heavily on a narrow base. London’s financial services sector has powered national revenues while other regions and industries have struggled to keep pace. Last year, financial services made up nearly 10% of the country’s economic output, with half of that amount coming directly from the capital. Making money isn’t the problem, but this uneven model has left the country vulnerable: when prosperity clusters in a single geography or sector, the broader economy becomes brittle. At the same time, many workers outside these pockets of success have been sidelined. With automation, digitisation, and now AI reshaping industries at speed, those without technical literacy find themselves excluded from opportunities to adapt, retrain, or participate in the major growth areas of the economy.
So, what does education have to do with it? For too long, learning has been framed as something that ends with school-leaving exams or a university degree. Beyond that, pathways for adults to re-enter education remain fragmented, expensive, or difficult to access. This has left generations underprepared for a labour market that is evolving fast. Coding and computational thinking, which should be cornerstones of modern learning, are still treated as elective skills rather than fundamental ones. Many assume that AI will simply pick up the mantle and code for us, but as OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor recently pointed out, coding isn’t going anywhere – we still need “systems thinkers” and people who can think in terms of coding architecture, even if coding itself may be done increasingly by AI.
We’re left with a broken learning arc. Young people may pick up some exposure in school, but adults rarely get the chance to re-skill, leaving them stranded as technology marches ahead. National Coding Week ought to force a recognition that education cannot be a one-shot investment – it has to be lifelong, move with the times, and be accessible to all.
Why coding literacy still matters
AI may be transforming how work is done, but its impact will not be evenly distributed. Far from it. Tools that generate text, images, and even code have lowered the barrier to entry, but they have also raised the expectations of what us humans bring to the table. Success increasingly depends on the ability to frame problems, interrogate outputs, and build systems that are reliable and scalable. And coding and computational thinking literacy is the gateway to this skillset. That’s what Bret meant when he referred to “systems thinking”. The ability to break problems into steps, design workflows, test assumptions, and think in terms of coding architecture. Coding provides the fluency needed to harness AI effectively rather than passively consume its outputs.
And here’s the crux of the matter. Without widespread coding literacy, the transformative benefits of AI will consolidate in the hands of a small number of global tech giants. Businesses, public services, and communities without the ability to adapt these tools risk being relegated further as spectators in their own economy. On the other hand, a workforce that is broadly fluent in coding, and modern AI tools, can spread the benefits more widely: enabling small firms to innovate, public services to modernise, and individuals to pivot into new careers. We need to move away from the mindset that coding is about training software engineers – it’s actually about learning a language and a way of thinking that we’re all going to need in the near future.
A practical reskilling blueprint
If the UK is to meet this reskilling challenge, it needs to shift from symbolic gestures to concrete pathways that make coding accessible, whether through vocational reskilling programmes or programmes designed to ground learners in the fundamentals of the technology underpinning the AI tools that will become commonplace in the enterprise. That begins with opening the pipeline for adults, offering funded local bootcamps, evening courses, and stackable micro-credentials that recognise prior experience and fit around work or family commitments. Removing friction matters: providing childcare, travel support, or browser-based learning environments ensures that opportunity isn’t restricted to those with time, money, and expensive hardware. Local libraries, colleges, and community centres can act as hubs where people of any age can get hands-on exposure and discover an aptitude they may never have realised.
But what gets taught also needs to evolve. It’s not a “one and done” deal. Coding education must balance the fundamentals of programming with the modern toolchains now shaping industries, from APIs and data handling to version control and agentic AI workflows. Courses should foster teamwork and communication alongside technical skills, reflecting how real-world software is built. Assessment must also change: binary pass/fail grading demotivates learners, whereas feedback-rich environments guide progress, use errors to deepen learning, and build confidence. Even AI itself can be a boon when it comes to offering personalised, structured learning and feedback. Finally, employers have a vital role to play, offering paid apprenticeships, mid-career internships, and co-designed courses aligned to actual industry needs. Together, these measures create a bottom-up approach that doesn’t wait for a single national strategy but empowers individuals, communities, and businesses to reskill at scale.
It can’t be stressed enough – Britain’s future won’t be secured by chasing the next trade deal or tech partnership, but by equipping its own people with the skills needed to shape the country’s growth. If we treat coding as the new common language of work, National Coding Week could mark the point where the country stopped drifting and started driving with purpose.
Phillip Snalune
Phillip Snalune is CEO of Codio, the leading evidence-based tech skills learning experience company, harnessing computing education research and AI to scale tech skills education for the workforce of the future.
