The coding school is part of the world-renowned 42 Network and the first of its branches to have opened in the Arabian Gulf.

While the pandemic has made schools and colleges go classroom-less, a new coding school has opened in Abu Dhabi that has no teachers or classrooms.

The new coding school named —42 Abu Dhabi that has 225 students at present was inaugurated in Mina Zayed on Sunday by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, a member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council and chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Office.

With 40 per cent of them women in the entire batch, this new coding school is a new milestone in the UAE leadership’s strategy to nurture tomorrow’s leaders today.

The coding school is part of the world-renowned 42 Network and the first of its branches to have opened in the Arabian Gulf.

The education of coding has always been encouraged in the Emirates; however, this school comes with a new feature of a tuition-free model rooted with peer-to-peer learning, i.e.it has no teachers or classrooms. Instead, participants study independently and work on projects.

The college which is open 24 hours a day offers programmes free of charge and aims to cultivate creativity, collaboration, and self-discipline.

Over 400 candidates applied to be part of 42 Abu Dhabi’s inaugural group, whose initial selection process took place from May to August. Three groups of candidates underwent 26-day tests of motivation, persistence, and commitment, after which a total of 225 candidates successfully joined the coding school on September 26.

The young group of coders are aged between 18 and 30 and almost all live in the UAE, among which forty per cent are women.

Interested aspirants who want to apply to 42 Abu Dhabi require no previous coding experience, however, they must be aged at least 18Enrolment requires registration and the initial selection is made through an online assessment that evaluates cognitive capacity through logic and memory tests.