Mission Encodeable

4 years ago today, we launched Mission Encodeable as 14-year-old students. While both of us really enjoyed coding, we noticed that it wasn’t always presented in a way that sparked the same enthusiasm in others, and we set out to change that.

Since then, we’ve had over a quarter of a million sessions on our website across more than 180 countries.

Our mission hasn’t changed. We want everyone to be able to learn to code for free in a way that’s fun and engaging, so, ultimately, we can inspire future computer scientists. We’d like to say thank you to everyone who has used our tutorials and supported us along the way. We’re so excited about what’s to come!

The Python Fundamentals course that we initially created has since been improved and expanded, and we’ve recently released a Web Development course that covers HTML, CSS & Web Design. Visit our website to find out about what we offer: https://missionencodeable.com

Happy International Women’s Day! 👩💻♀️

As we seek to inspire more women and girls into computer science, it’s really important to make sure that everyone feels represented. Through our Computing Legends campaign, we’ve created a series of free to download posters, with accompanying blog posts, to celebrate the pioneers of computing.

From Annie Easley’s work with the Centaur project at NASA, to Kathleen Booth who invented the first assembly language, there are so many inspirational women in our subject’s history.

To download all of the posters and find the accompanying blog posts, take a look at our computing legends page: https://missionencodeable.com/legends

Are you looking for new resources for your coding toolbox that will help you inspire your students? 🔧🧰

In our latest blog post, Anna outlines some of the core tools that we use at Mission Encodeable and in our studies. We hope that you find something that’s useful!

🖊️ Read the blog here: https://missionencodeable.com/blog/five-resources-to-add-to-your-coding-toolbox

For many students (Mission Encodeable’s founders included), exam season is just around the corner. Whether it’s GCSEs, A-levels, or university exams, it’s time to start thinking about revision.

🖊️ In this popular blog post from last year, Anna shares some of her revision tips and tricks from a student perspective: https://missionencodeable.com/blog/revision-tips-and-tricks

If you’d like to develop your coding skills before your exams then make sure to take a look at Mission Encodeable’s free tutorials. From both of us at Mission Encodeable, good luck with your revision and in your exams! 🍀

Here at Mission Encodeable, we pride ourselves on our engaging, beginner-friendly courses, and many of the students who’ve learnt to code using our platform have been inspired to pursue coding and computer science at a higher level. That’s why today we are thrilled to announce our new sponsor: the University of Nottingham. 🎉

The University of Nottingham is an award-winning university with an international outlook, ranked among the Top 20 in the UK and in the world’s Top 100 (QS World University Rankings 2026). It’s also a member of the prestigious Russell Group of world-class, research-intensive UK universities. Their School of Computer Science offers courses that give students a solid foundation in the core theory and skills underpinning computer science and artificial intelligence, with support to apply them in a multitude of situations.

With the University of Nottingham’s support, we can expand, update and add to our courses, improve the features and resources for teachers and ensure that everything is kept free and accessible to all learners. In addition, we’re looking forward to promoting the excellent opportunities at Nottingham in their highly respected School of Computer Science.

📌 Read more in our blog post: https://missionencodeable.com/blog/were-now-sponsored-by-the-university-of-nottingham

Teachers, are you subscribed to our newsletter? 📧📫

We know that your inbox is probably quite full already, but we promise that we’ll email you no more than four times a year with things you’ll actually want to receive. For example, we’ll make sure you’re the first to hear about our seasonal challenges, and any new, exciting additions to the Mission Encodeable course.

🔗 The next issue will be sent tomorrow - sign up for free here: http://missionencodeable.com/teachers

Most of the traditional coding lesson plans and curricula that can be found online are, in a word, dull. 🥱 There's nothing creative about them and it doesn't take long before your students have zoned out and cast their minds to lunchtime. We're different. Mission Encodeable has been created by students, for students and in every one of our levels, students get the chance to create genuinely interesting projects and games to play with each other. 🎮🙌

Not only that, but Mission Encodeable is completely free to access, beginner friendly, and doesn’t require any pesky sign ins. We’re approved by industry experts, and we’ve got lots of resources and guidance for teachers too.

🖊️ In our latest blog post, co-founder Anna Wake shares five reasons you should use Mission Encodeable: https://missionencodeable.com/blog/five-reasons-to-use-mission-encodeable

As 2025 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on another amazing year for Mission Encodeable! Users from 155 countries across all seven continents engaged with our platform this year. Here are some of our favourite moments.

In January, we spoke to some of our users in two focus groups, for students and teachers. 👨‍🎓 It was great to hear their perspectives on what we’re doing well, and to get some ideas for future development.

In March, we closed out the first series of the Inside Tech Careers podcast. 🎤 At this point, being students, we were all too aware that exam season was just around the corner - Anna shared some of her top revision tips and tricks for students in a post on the Mission Encodeable blog.

The rest of March, April and May were spent cracking on with revision for our own A-level exams, including Computer Science. 📚 As students, we understand the challenges that students face, especially in terms of preparing for exams - because we’re facing them too!

In May, we shared our perspectives as students on the future of GCSE Computer Science, amidst the Curriculum and Assessment Review. We argued that the core structure and content of GCSE Computer Science works well and provides a strong foundation for future study. The main areas of improvement are delivery and assessment: we think all exam boards should offer an onscreen programming exam, and that teachers need more support to deliver the subject in a way that is more engaging, accessible and inclusive.

June’s spell of sunny weather prompted us to bring back our Summer Coding Challenges, which reached more students than ever before - helping them to practise their coding skills in a seasonally themed way. We finished our A-level exams, having sat 20 of them between us with a total assessment time of 40 hours.

In July, we attended the Festival of Computing at Bromsgrove School, where we had an inspiring day of conversations with teachers and other organisations.

September saw us attend PyCon where we delivered a workshop for young people - teaching them to code a program to notify them when the ISS is above! 🛰️ We used this as an opportunity to launch our new course all about using APIs in Python. To cap off the month, we began studying our undergraduate degrees in Computer Science.

October brought us back to Bromsgrove School where we delivered a workshop at the CAS Conference about how to make coding lessons more engaging. We then spent the rest of the day speaking to teachers, together on the stand of our excellent partners Craig ‘n’ Dave.

To wrap up the year, we brought back our Christmas Coding Challenges in December for the third year running. 🎄 Finally, we revealed our first sponsor, Pearson, who’ll be supporting us through the new year so we can continue our work.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout 2025. We’re looking forward to inspiring even more future computer scientists together with you in 2026!

How can we help students discover careers in tech?

The Inside Tech Careers podcast is hosted by Mission Encodeable’s co-founder Harry Wake. It features inspiring guests who share what their jobs involve, what a typical day looks like, and the advice they'd offer to anyone interested in pursuing a similar path.

🎙️ There are 17 episodes in the first series, featuring a wide range of guests - from data journalists to product designers. Listen to them at https://missionencodeable.com/podcast, or search for Inside Tech Careers in your favourite podcast player.

We're thrilled to announce that Pearson are now sponsoring Mission Encodeable! 🎉

Pearson are the only awarding body to offer an onscreen, practical programming assessment as part of their GCSE Computer Science qualification, helping all students develop the computational skills they need for the future.

Mission Encodeable's Python Fundamentals course is perfectly aligned with Pearson's programming exam content. The course is broken into a series of simple, well-scaffolded levels that teach Python fundamentals. We also include multiple choice quizzes and signature projects – all relevant and engaging, allowing students to put what they've learnt into practice. It's completely free to access, with no registration required, providing students and teachers with the support they need to succeed in Pearson's GCSE Computer Science qualification.

We're very excited to be working with Pearson to provide students and teachers with a cohesive, forward-looking approach, and we’re very grateful to them for sponsoring us so we can continue our work.

📌 Take a look at Mission Encodeable’s free Python Fundamentals course: https://missionencodeable.com/get-started

🔗 Find out more about switching to Pearson’s GCSE Computer Science qualification: https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-gcses/computer-science-2020/switch-to-pearson.html

We’re very excited that our Christmas Coding Challenges are back! 🎄 All your students need to do is dash over to https://missionencodeable.com/christmas to get started.

Every challenge contains a series of tasks for students, as well as helpful hints and possible extensions. There are ten of them in total, meaning that there’s something for all abilities.

Among our favourites, you'll find Rudolph's Adventure Story, a choose-your-own adventure game that'll have students on the edge of their seats hoping they made the right decision, the Christmas Card Creator, which dives into advanced string formatting, an Elf Name Generator, and even a game of Festive Hangman!

We hope your students will enjoy attempting the challenges as much as we enjoyed creating them. Let us know if you have any thoughts or questions, and we wish you all the very best for the final few weeks of term.

At Mission Encodeable, we’re very proud to have almost 50 projects in our free Python Fundamentals course. Every single one is designed to be relevant and engaging for students.

With no registration or accounts required, teachers are using these projects with their students in all sorts of ways - including for in-class activities, extensions and homework tasks.

Our student progress tracker is perfect for keeping track of which projects students have completed, and it’s free to download on our teachers’ page, alongside several other resources and guidance. You can find it here: https://missionencodeable.com/teachers