Is it more powerful? Well, more memory, better video, but in terms of OP/s?
But I don't think it's such a great thing for kids per se. It depends on the experimentation environment they get. The hardware is almost irrelevant. Something as direct as a Commodore 64 looks more appealing to me than VSCode on a Raspberry.
Unless they’re following a particular course based on a specific thing like a Pi they’ll probably be better off with some older repurposed hardware, an old desktop PC with some sort of Linux perhaps.
The Pi shines when you’re interfacing with relays and sensors and stuff, for software alone a PC or laptop will be fine.
But I don't think it's such a great thing for kids per se. It depends on the experimentation environment they get. The hardware is almost irrelevant. Something as direct as a Commodore 64 looks more appealing to me than VSCode on a Raspberry.