Google is to fund 15,000 Raspberry Pi microcomputers to schoolchildren around the UK.
Google’s co-founder Eric Schmidt announced the move during a visit to Cambridge, where he was teaching a classroom of children how to code.
Raspberry Pi has been working with Google and six UK educational partners to find children who will benefit from having their own microcomputer.
“Grants like this show us that companies like Google are not prepared to wait for government or someone else to fix the problems we’re all discussing, but want to help tackle them themselves,” said a Raspberry Pi statement.
Educational charity Teach First, which is working with Google and Raspberry Pi, welcomed the move.
Acting CEO, John Colenutt, said: “It is vitally important to equip young people with the right skills to work in the UK’s rapidly-growing science and technology sector and to inspire them to develop careers in these fields.”
The body is already working in partnership with Google to train 100 science and IT teachers in schools serving low-income communities across the country.
“We are proud of partnerships like this one, which will help to improve the IT and science skills of tomorrow’s pioneers,” added Colenutt.
The UK's IT education system had previously come under fire from Schmidt, who had described the country as wasting its technological talents due to an inadequate IT curriculum.
comment, the government scrapped the GCSE ICT curriculum last year, planning to replace the
subject with a more “rigorous” teaching of computer science and programming subjects.