Sberbank Rossii : opens free programming school with neither teachers nor grades

24 May 2018, Saint Petersburg - Sberbank is launching School 21, a unique educational initiative for cultivating world-class programming specialists. The school is free of charge and the length of study ranges from 1.5 to 4 years. The school will function 24/7.

School 21 will provide an education based on a unique French method that uses gamification to help each student to set an individual and adaptive trajectory of study. This approach encourages high internal motivation throughout the course of study and facilitates the acquisition of knowledge in situations involving a large degree of uncertainty and an overloaded information field.

The school's educational process is founded on peer-to-peer individual and group work on IT projects. School 21 doesn't have any teachers, lectures, grades or other conventional aspects of the academic world. In accordance with the method, the school's representatives don't control the activities of the students, and instead use the IT platform to check the quality of their final work and whether it is completed on time. Potential students don't need to provide exam results to enrol in the school. The main condition of participating is being motivated to develop and having the desire to become a world-class specialist. Thanks to this method the school will be able to produce leading specialists from scratch who can expertly architect technological solutions, including in the field of artificial intelligence.

Anyone aged 18 to 30 who successfully passes the selection process can become a student of the school. You can apply to participate in the selection process on http://www.21-school.ru.

School 21 plans to enrol up to 1,000 students every year, and expects the same number to graduate annually as programming specialists.

'As a high-tech financial organisation, Sberbank needs highly qualified IT professionals and is interested in increasing the quality of IT education in general,' said Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank. 'That is why we intend to be not only a consumer in the market of IT professionals, but also an active player that produces new experts who are versed in modern technology.'

The school is being created on the basis of a cooperation agreement between Sberbank and Association 42, an organisation that has become one of the global leaders in IT education since its founding five years ago. The agreement was signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum by CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank Herman Gref and Managing Director and Co-founder of 42 Nicolas Sadirac.

'At 42 we believe that the modern world is more and more in need new types of programmers - those who are confident, mature, ready to think outside the box and work in teams. We are delighted to welcome this new school to our ecosystem and are proud that our methodology has made its way to Russia,' commented Mr Sadirac.

The parties have agreed to cooperate on increasing the quality of IT education and giving the bank the rights to licensed content, software, methodical and educational materials. In addition, 42 will provide technical support.

42 is the first completely free educational initiative in the field of computer programming. It was founded by Nicolas Sadirac, Florian Buche and Kwame Yamgnane in 2013, at a time when the French digital industry was experiencing an acute shortage of IT professionals. The project's schools have been recognised as the top technological educational establishments by CodinGame, an online resource for programmers. 42 has two campuses - in Paris and Silicon Valley. Schools in South Africa, Romania, Belgium, Morocco, the Netherlands and Ukraine operate under licensing agreements.