UK.gov recruiting 400 crack CompSci experts to go into teaching

Lots of new teachers are getting hired on fixed term 10 month contracts. Not much security in teaching these days.

Luring professionals into teaching would seem to be more efficient than trying to turn teachers into programmers. Problem might be if those teachers are expected to stray too far outside of their area expertise.

"Now, our new curriculum teaches children computer science, information technology, and digital literacy: teaching them how to code, and how to create their own programs; not just how to work a computer; but how a computer works, and how to make it work for you."

My computing lessons entailed exactly that back in 1981. Go figure...

By Gove! I think he's got it!

Gets my vote. Good luck teaching teachers though, they don't like change!

Wait, do they want to teach programming, or computer science?

I work in IT, in schools.

I'll be surprised if much changes "on the floor". Not because they are already doing it, but because most teachers can't code (I've met some maths teachers who could do more in FORTRAN and COBOL than the IT guys could in ANY language, and one former-C-programmer who went from network management to teaching, but that's about it).

And the reason I didn't go into teaching when I got my Maths & IT degree is purely because teaching is a horrible profession. The paperwork is immense. The discipline comes hard because most things aren't allowed. You spend most of your life as babysitter and social worker, not teaching.

Back in the "old days", I'd have like being a teacher, and a teacher of IT. But back in those days I was taught BASIC in primary school / first year of secondary, and other languages by the time I was 16 anyway. Officially. In Computer Science lessons. And we weren't allowed to get away with claiming that word-processing something was "computer science", more than just using a computer as a basic tool. Hell, I was offered desktop publishing courses in sixth form and all sorts. By the time I hit university, the entire year of "Introduction to Programming" in Java that was mandatory was a yawn-fest and I skipped it and just handed in the assignments by email without even going to the lectures.

What we teach now isn't computer science. But a lot of teachers are convinced that they are computer science teachers when they teach that. They are in for a shock, as is any IT professional that goes into teaching. It's just not going to work.

(As some examples, I met a "e-Learning Co-ordinator" who thought a VLE was having some Android tablets in the classroom, lots of people who called the desktop chassis "the hard drive", another in a private school who thought that macros were "too hard" for primary-age kids to learn when other state primary schools had 11 year olds writing games using them, and many who thought that Logo was the pinnacle of programming experience).

As such, I wish any IT pro going into schools luck. And any IT teacher who thinks they can just go on a course (ECDL is the usual waste-of-time of preference) and learn all this stuff too.

A bit late isn't it. They should have figured out years ago that technology was a key subject area. As early as the 80s this was apparent.

But then again what they always prefer is a generation of obedient slaves not independent thinkers. Otherwise how would they have got us to stay in our seats during those pointless RE and ICT lessons?

What if the kids start questioning the value of what they are being taught? Ah yes we did, but we were trained never to voice that out loud. Adults don't help with their prevalent attitude that kids aren't supposed to "enjoy school", therefore us lamenting the point of what we are being taught is "just kids moaning about school" which is normal. Adults should know better, they once sat through it themselves. They know it's really a form of prison, where kids are put through a test of how many pointless work tasks can they take without breaking. It's a widely admitted, yet widely dismissed fact among adults that almost all of what we were taught at school as kids was a waste of time.

Not going to get any Facebooks, Googles, Ebays, Twitters, etc from this country anytime soon. But perhaps that's fine, perhaps what we are after is a nation of wage slaves who can remember a bit of Shakespeare and what the parts of a church are called.

hoping to get kids into programming and coding instead of just teaching them how to use Microsoft Office and email

I'm afraid you're a bit out of date ... ICT has moved on from the Office and email days and is now is into training how to use facebook (aka, maintaining your digital portfolio) and youtube videos (aka digital video + digital audo) along with a bit of "isn't this internet thing amazing"

At least that seemed to be the thrust of the explanation of the GCSE ICT option at my son's secondary school we got on the "GCSE options info evening" we had a couple of weeks ago. Any "coding" would be limited to things to make a web page looking "edgy".

Add into the equation that its a BTEC and not a GCSE + virtually everyone taking it at that school gets top grade and (this was promoted as a major plus point) it seemed to be almost totally internally assessed confirmed my opinion that it was basically worthless ... unless you want to make youtube videos.

There is no quick fix!

I was talking to my daughters IT teacher recently. He had just retired so was a little more chatty than usual. I asked how he got into teaching and he said he did a Chemistry degree and then fell into it. He then asked me what I did, and I mentioned I was a software engineer. He replied that he could never get his head around programming!

Most IT teachers seem to just wonder in from other courses. Fine to teach the vagaries of powerpoint, but programming? Unfortunately unlike most subjects IT is never seen as a specialism. Would you get a person with a degree in English teach Maths, Physics etc? Even at university level you see very few people with real world programming experience. True story, I work part time for a online university. The computing lecturers were gathered around and the new courses were discussed and it was mentioned it used imperative languages. Apart from me, no one in the room had any idea what that meant. Even the courses themselves will be more likely designed by Maths professors(In universities Computing is often lumped with Maths)

IT training must be improved in schools, but I severely doubt many of the present IT staff are up to the task. Working professionals are unlikely to jump ship, so it has to start at graduate level. Industry and computer societies such as the BCS must take a more proactive role in ensuring the training in schools is relevant and to the right standard. Finally it IT training should be given a higher profile and budget in the curriculum.

They should start by teaching promises.promises.promises - all to be broken later on

without the pain of calback hell - don't call us we'll call you.

At least Microsoft and Google are involved ... :-(

Why insist on two languages? At that age, why not teach them how to program properly instead so they can turn their hands to multiple languages?

When are they teaching basic logic to these kids, before or after they have been taught bad programming? Would that be before they've been taught the basic maths required for programming?

Ho hum ... at least they'll be able to code more crap apps for defunct windoze phones and googly stuff ...

I can't help thinking Gove should be subject to a CO2 emmisions cap.

What about the kids who have no aptitude for programming?

Nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room -- not everyone has an aptitude for programming, just as not everyone has an aptitude for maths, or languages, or music.

Some years ago, Richard Bornat (a computer science professor at Middlesex University) and his graduate student Saeed Dehnadi did research which demonstrated that in their class of first-year computer science undergraduates, there were two distinct groups: those who intuitively understood how to write programs, and those who didn't. Worryingly, the performance of the second group could not be significantly improved by training them. This was published as a paper titled "The camel has two humps". (You can find it by googling the title.)

Now Gove wants to try to force school kids to write computer programs, when most of them will have neither the interest nor the aptitude for it. It's a recipe for disaster.

Head meet wall

When a software engineer with 30 years experience and a "proper" 1980s degree can't get a job, and the employment market is shrinking faster than a fast-shrinking thing, why the hell are we forcing *all* children to learn something that 99.8% of them will have no interest, aptitude or competence in, and the remaining 0.2% will find no jobs in?

Oops, sorry, forgot, that's are the target demographic that recruiters are after - inexperience and incompetence, as demonstrated by most software that's out there, and mandated by government IT projects.

teaching in the uk

Your perceived* success in teaching has litle to do with your subject knowledge, even in an area where there is a teacher skills gap.

If you have never seriously considered being a science teacher before, don't do it now.

'Good'* teachers are those who are good at the difficult job of wrangling a room full of kids. If you think you can teach existing teachers how to do this then fine - they might one day consider you an expert teacher.

*in the wisdom of the uk system

So what happened in the 90s?

I'm aware of the "golden age" of the BBC Micro etc. and anyone over 40 seemed to actually be taught real computer science in schools, what changed? By the time I got to secondary school in '95 ICT had become as described here - a chance to mess around on the internet and "write a database" in Access. Such a nothing subject that even as someone who went on to do a CS degree I think I barely passed it just from being unable to bear the tedium. The only reason I got the programming bug was because my dad picked up a 10 year old BASIC book at a bootfair which was probably actually taught in schools when it was originally published.

Not more 'kin programmers? Peter Drucker was right!

"When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course."

Local kids spending all their time coding? Our chums in the developing world do it so much better anyway. Instead, we need to train our kids to make stuff, do stuff, build stuff, create stuff, get out there and live a life, instead of spending all their time chained to devices in stuffy rooms.

Skills or education

In school (70s) I was "taught" woodwork: Not just sticking bits of wood together or how to use a screwdriver, but dovetail joints and all that sort of stuff.

I viewed that in exactly the same way as most kids will view this new computing with its proper coding and not just how to use stuff. i.e. an excruciating, boring, complete and utter waste of time.

Then it was all about not wasting proper education on working class kids, but teaching us grafting skills instead. And this is the same.

Teachers, proper teachers, want to open young minds. They may be historians or geographers, but that's their tool to open the windows. It's about having an education for the sake of being educated.

I've spent about 30 years in education, working in some of the toughest situations.

I learnt my coding and computing skills mostly as an optional activity at lunchtimes when I was 14 or so. And I persevered because there were programmes I wanted to write. If I hadn't followed my first love, which is teaching kids with reading difficulties ( and which I also started as a volunteer at high school btw), I'd have become a professional in computers. Instead computing has been a sideshow for me. But I do know both sides of the fence.

So, coding.

Is that going to be teaching kids to think and problem solve, applicable in everyday life ( it could be)? Or is it going to be the 21st century equivalent of those cursed dovetail joints?