September 2014 marked a turning point in the English education system, with the coding becoming a compulsory part of the national curriculum. Moreover, it marked England as a global leader, of sorts, in education, as it is the first country in the world to "mandate teaching coding" to pupils at primary and secondary schools.

This notable change was described by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's technology correspondent, as a revolution, with the expert commenting in an article at the time: "If we can show a new generation how to be the masters not the servants of the machines of the future, then that is a prize worth winning".

Needless to say, getting it right early on is essential in not only equipping children with invaluable skills, but inspiring them to embrace computing in later life, in all its incarnations.

As the British government has noted, the new computing curriculum has been designed in such a way that it encourages "pupils to design computer programmes that address real world problems". If you want the next generation to be properly technologically savvy, they need to have a real understanding of base-level computing.

This is why innovative developments like Cubetto are welcome, because they offer a creative and engaging way of interacting and learning about code. Developed by Primo, which describes itself as "new kind of toy company", Cubetto offers education practitioners and learners a non-screen way of learning about code.

Instead, you're presented with a handmade robotic cube – hence the name – an "interface board" and instruction blocks, which all come together to offer users a novel but influential way of getting to grips with code.

The blocks are made up of four coloured shapes – red, blue, yellow and green – that are picked up as being certain directions. So, for example, red represents going forward, while blue corresponds with going left.

"The goal of the game is to guide Cubetto to his destination, represented by a house, a big cube, or any other object of your choice," the team behind Cubetto have previously stated on their Kickstarter page (it has more than achieved its financial goal).

"The robot executes in sequence the instructions placed in the board. By playing with Primo, children experiment with the queue of instructions. There's not a single solution or path to follow, it's also interesting to see how different children come up with different solutions."

It is suitable for youngsters across three age groups. This includes 4-7-year-olds (where you design and "execute simple programmes"); 8-11-year-olds (screen time becomes a useful part of the learning process); and 11 onwards (where you can begin to hack and add additional hardware).

The philosophy behind Cubetto runs parallel to the government's idea of changing the way we engage with technology – more and more people are advocating that children become, in the words of Primo, "creators and not just consumers within the digitalised world we live in".