It seems a bit backward to me, Construct (At least to me) isn't so much a beginner's program, it's an incredibly advanced high level visual based language, you might not program line by line, but the logic of an event sheet is effectively identical.
If your class is aimed at people who haven't programmed before (You mentioned it's an entry point) and doesn't entirely focus on the programming (You mentioned modelling and animation, hefty subjects on their own) I would say Construct is not suited, it's far too powerful, you can accomplish in minutes what would take C or Java hours to implement let alone learn, and if you started the class with Construct one week with people making platformers in seconds and the week after spending a hour teaching them how to make a menu in C++, they're going to wonder why they're learning near machine level programming when last week they were busting concepts in seconds!
Back in my youth we were introduced to programming with a FORTRAN exercise and switch programming, it definitely made us appreciate C afterwards!