A nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, Founders and Coders runs a full stack web development course for aspiring programmers. The school provides career support in the form of apprentices for students looking to start a tech career.
The curriculum at Founders and Coders is based on a peer-learning model of education. Students figure out solutions to coding challenges collaboratively, teaching each other with the support of mentors from previous cohorts.
Founders and Coders might be the most excitingly unusual coding bootcamp program in the industry. The school operates as a nonprofit, doesn’t charge students any tuition, and the classroom is completely decentralized. The school operates on a peer-led model, drawing on the radical educational research in the field of deschooling, which suggests that new learners can learn intuitively and collaboratively when given a problem, without the need for an expert teacher to lead them. Founders and Coders grew out of the informal peer learning sessions organized at the British Library by its founder, Dan Sofer when he started accountability groups to work through self-guided online learning programs. Today, the school continues to operate with this essentially collectivist ethos. Founders and Coders has expanded from its temporary classrooms in Camden Collective to its home in Finsbury as it continues to assemble intentionally diverse coding cohorts.
Founders and Coders is headquartered in London. The school shares coworking space with other tech innovators at Space4 in Finsbury Park, located in Fare Zone 2 on the London Underground. Founders and Coders has also run programs in Palestine, in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as South Africa. The school’s cooperative values and commitment to equity drive its support for developing new tech talent in colonized and formerly colonized nations in the global south.
Founders and Coders helps students learn web development skills and pair those skills with project management and UX design skills. For information about other, more structured opportunities to learn web development, prospective students can make use of the “Classes Near Me” tool from Noble Desktop. With this tool, students can locate and compare additional web development classes and bootcamps.
Founders and Coders offers one class, their web development program. Students learn from the school’s open-source curriculum, which includes instruction from various recognized sources like Digital Ocean, GitHub, Next.js, and W3Schools. During the pre-apprenticeship part of the program, students level up their skills in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with an emphasis on accessibility. During the apprenticeship portion of the program, students advance through challenges to learn about servers, databases, and APIs, acquiring skills in Node.js, React, and SQL. The curriculum uses a full stack approach, as students develop server-side, client-side, and proficiency in both server-side and client-side application development.
The class format at Founders and Coders is also atypical for the industry and is intentionally designed to help students learn through on-the-job experience. The program is divided into two parts, pre-apprenticeship, and apprenticeship. Admission into the pre-apprenticeship does not guarantee admission into the apprenticeship. Students in the pre-apprenticeship work part-time in-person in cohorts of up to 60 students for 12 weeks, then successful students apply for paid coding internships, called apprenticeships. Those who land apprenticeships move into the apprenticeship level of the program, which typically sees 8-10 students working full-time in-person for an additional 12 weeks before transitioning into full-time work in their internship. Students spend 12-18 months working full-time on the job and preparing for their End Point Assessment (EPA), a series of practical assessments established by the British Computer Society to evaluate the performance of apprentices. Classes are peer-led, and graduates from previous cohorts are available to mentor student teams and individuals in every aspect of the program, from coding to career readiness.
Admission into Founders and Coders is highly competitive, even with their comparatively large pre-apprenticeship cohorts. To apply for the program, students must be local to London and eligible for an apprenticeship. Prospective students must complete a pre-work program, including the creation of a personal website, to showcase their skills before applying. Finally, students submit their pre-work portfolio with a detailed application, including answering several short essay questions about work style. Founders and Coders prioritizes enrolling diverse cohorts, giving preference to women and genderqueer applicants, non-white applicants, and applicants who do not have a university education. Typically women make up over half of the pre-apprenticeship cohorts. The school expects all students to subscribe to its collectivist ethos and commitment to proactive allyship and admits students who demonstrate those values. While not all applicants receive admission into the Founders and Coders program, anyone can work through the school’s open-source curriculum.
Founders and Coders is committed to keeping its peer-led program tuition-free. On top of charging no tuition, the school ensures that all apprentices work in paid positions for the duration of their apprenticeships. Recent graduates report, however, that a donation to the nonprofit is required for admission.
All students work with several mentors, alumni of the Founders and Coders program, on everything from advising to specializing. Employment mentors support students in developing their application materials and interviewing skills. Because of the apprenticeship aspect of the program, students who go through the whole program gain extensive on-the-job experience which can be leveraged toward a full-time career. In both segments of the program, students develop real-world projects to the specifications of real clients.
Founders and Coders does not report alumni outcomes in terms of graduation, EPA, or job placement. Students have gone on to work at places like 27Partners, a British consultancy, and have founded their own startups, including Personably and Workerbird.
The web development program at Founders and Coders has garnered significant reviews from students who have experienced the school’s approach to coding education. Graduates who appreciate the school’s collectivist approach to learning find that the community created during students’ time together is invaluable to their learning and their professional development. One graduate said, “There really is a sense of being ‘in it together’ which makes the whole thing really enjoyable!” The variety in the curriculum and the strong emphasis on real-world coding environments complements the collaborative environment. Another graduate recognized that “[t]he course has a great balance of workshops, coding challenges, short weekly team projects and longer three-week projects which have given me fantastic experience of working in a team and problem solving, along with a really solid grounding in the technical concepts.”
Students who prefer closely directed instruction and opportunities for individual achievement struggle with the decentralized classroom and collective success model that Founders and Coders works with, as do students who are unwilling to do a deep reflection on feminism and serious work on their commitment to allyship. The course itself requires a serious time commitment from students, leading one graduate to note that “it is best if you do not have anything else going on on the side,” as those who go through the full program will work full time for over a year in their apprenticeship before completing their training. But for students looking for a radical approach to learning, the Founders and Coders program is incomparable.
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