back to article 2 kool 4 komputing: Teens' interest in GCSE course totally bombs

The number of pupils signing up for GCSE computing has plateaued just years after the qualification was introduced, raising concerns that not enough is being done to help teachers with more difficult courses. According to the latest figures from exam watchdog Ofqual, 67,800 pupils were due to sit the GCSE (General Certificate …

  1. werdsmith Silver badge

    My son did GCSE computing and scored A, but then promptly dumped it for science at A Levels.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Unhappy

      "My son did GCSE computing and scored A, but then promptly dumped it for science at A Levels."

      The way pay has always been in science, and the way it seems to be going in IT, both seems to be mugs' games these days.

      1. Nolveys
        Windows

        @Doctor Syntax

        The way pay has always been in science, and the way it seems to be going in IT, both seems to be mugs' games these days.

        Nail on the head there. The only people who seem to be making good money these days are those who can somehow skim off the top or downright steal or extort (or work for the government). Anyone who does actual work for a living is screwed.

        If I had a kid and they said they were going into computing as a career I think I'd have the same reaction as Thomas Jane at the end of The Mist.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "or work for the government"

          Oi. I did that in science for some years and I can tell you pay and prospects were crap. You did not get to "skim off the top" in science in the Civils Service.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Precisely what my daughter did. She got an A* in GCSE computing, then at A Level did Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Physics. Why? Even if she wanted to do a Degree in a computing based subject, Computing A-Levels are not required, merely 'useful'. More general, 'academic' A Levels increase your choice of degree options, and are more impressive to the better universities. And, I can concur with the article : teaching ability in secondary school computing courses is very patchy. Only good one encountered was a techie who'd been in industry for years, then swapped to be a teacher as a lifestyle choice. The rest were totally clueless. One of them was a 'career' PE teacher for christ's sake.....

      1. DJV Silver badge
        Joke

        "'career' PE teacher"

        Yeah, only good for a quick somersault over a Skovox Blitzer and then get run over crossing the road a few days later.. lightweights!

    3. Primus Secundus Tertius

      If they are bright enough to read the news, they will have read how computer jobs are outsourced at the drop of a cost analysis presentation. Also, their older relatives may be able to tell first hand stories of outsourcing.

      So why bother, when you are not really wanted?

      1. gandalfcn Silver badge

        So why bother, when you are not really wanted?

        Perhaps they should have a word with Mrs. May, she cares about the country, its economy and future, doesn't she?

      2. Kane
        Thumb Up

        "computer jobs are outsourced at the drop of a cost analysis presentation"

        Like it, gonna try and use that in a meeting later on.

    4. DropBear

      "My son did GCSE computing and scored A, but then promptly dumped it for science at A Levels."

      Not really surprising - neither is worth doing for the money, but at least science might turn out to be interesting with a bit of luck - on the other hand, nobody dreams of herding databases and debugging misbehaving cloud instances...

    5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Was listening to an interview from a few years ago about this. The obviously young interviewer and the obviously young interviewee were exploring the possibilities and the interview seemed surprised that computer science and programming should be taught "at high school level" and the teach said there was a "gap in the market". FFS, do these people know nothing? I was doing programming as part of Computer Studies O and A level almost 40 years ago!

  2. Thomas Gray

    I told you so

    Computing Science (which existed as a GCSE for years before this "initiative" - heck, it was originally an O-Level) isn't for everyone. ICT is the gateway drug for most people, teaching as it did problem solving skills through 4th Gen tools. It should never have been dropped in the name of "progress" from (ironically) the Conservative party

    1. Naselus

      Re: I told you so

      Rubbish. I did an ICT GCSE back in the 1990s and it was literally just training in using MS Office - a month each in Excel, Word, Publisher (like anyone uses Publisher), Access and Powerpoint. We had whole hour-long lessons based around using Wordart ffs. What little 'programming' was involved was learning to make Excel macros. You'd get more problem solving skills from an English Lit class.

      I'd been building PCs from components and learning to code by myself for 4-5 years by that point and so dropped the subject in disgust. From my school, literally no-one who completed the class got an IT-related job or degree; a lot of them were driven away from the whole area by their experience.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I told you so

        I did O-level Computer Science a few years before you and we had to do programming and there was no learning of MS tools.

        We had to do some machine code programming and at least two projects going from requirements analysis all the way to implementation.

        We also had to learn the basics of circuit design, logic gates etc.

        I'm not saying it was perfect but it did give you an overview of what was what.

        As I think is the case now the biggest problems seemed to be getting a teacher who actually knew something about the topic.

  3. aidanstevens

    90% of jobs might require "digital skills" but how many of those will be exclusively using proprietary systems that a GCSE won't teach them?

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      It's a bit like saying 'all jobs need people to be able to drive', 'Let's teach everyone to be a mechanic'.

      1. kmac499

        "It's a bit like saying 'all jobs need people to be able to drive', 'Let's teach everyone to be a mechanic'."

        A well educated\trained mechanic is a skilled and honourable post, actually I think this is more like 'well all jobs need people to be able to drive let's teach car engine design with metallurgy, thermodynamics etc etc. '

        Dumping the ICT in favour of CompSci is the typically elitist British attitude of the more academic the better and the oiks will appear by magic.

        Yes we need 'pure' Computer scientists, but we need a damn site more skilled and flexible computer tradesmen and women. People who do know that processors are built out of transistors wired as logic gates, but are more concerned and capable at getting the network working and the website published today.

        1. Tom 7

          RE: Its a bit like

          no it bloody isn't. Its more like saying 'If we teach you how to read a road map, some engineering, some civil engineering, some geography, and most of all some common sense and the logic behind many many human constructs, you may be able to understand why we need all the above jobs, how to fit them into an efficient system to help people move forward'

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "90% of jobs might require "digital skills" but how many of those will be exclusively using proprietary systems that a GCSE won't teach them?"

      Right. There needs to be encouragement to look at all available course, but teaching every pupil CompSci is not essential by any means. But it should be an available choice. A good rounded education is good for everyone, even if much of the stuff you learn is never used again. There are large chunks of my education that I've never needed to know since I studied it, but the overall general knowledge and the ability to know what I don't know but does exists somewhere can still be useful. I don't need to know the terms of the Versaille Peace treaty any more, but knowing it was one of the causes of the lead up to WW2, ie learning from historical mistakes and thinking through the likely consequences of decisions, is useful.

  4. cs94njw

    Woohoo! Skills shortage == more pay for us oldies.

    Sheesh - young people are mugs :( High pay, chilled out work place, portability across industries,.... oh, and it being the future of everything.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "Woohoo! Skills shortage == more pay for us oldies."

      You think so? Just do as you're told & train your Indian replacement.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I know that I can get a team of 4 brilliant developers from the Philippines for the cost of 1 contractor from the UK. I also know that I dont need to be in the same room, building or country as they are for them to work well. They are happy to work UK or US hours, not a problem. If one or more of them don't work out, there are a smorgasbord of others to chose from. Programming could go the same way as steel making or coal mining in the UK : other places can do it cheaper, you'd need a stunningly good reason to do it locally.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          4 brilliant developers

          Yea, about that (but I posted that already)

          you'd need a stunningly good reason to do it locally

          Like, because you are suddenly just another 3rd world country, possibly even being bombed by the US for insubordination to their foreign policy goals.

          When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

          1) music 2) movies 3) microcode (software) 4) high-speed pizza delivery

          So, okay, in that Neal Stepehenson quote, one would probably have to remove 1), 2) and 3). And who wants pizza?

          No wait, there is still fintech. Ah, never mind.

          1. Phukov Andigh Bronze badge

            bravo!

            except our pizza will soon be delivered by robots and there's no decent "Italian Mafia".

            Uncle Enzo for President!

            Stephenson was a visionary. Everything else, is coming true, except for the pizza delivery. Until I get a Deliverator car in my garage, I don't count that future as having arrived :P

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          one good reason

          How about the long term cost of loosing control of everything your country does that relies upon computers by giving it to another country.

          You want to see the cost then just look at what happened when we relied upon Microsoft and destroyed our home grown and superior efforts, M$ have us by the short and curlies and we just allowed the the home grown company (ARM) to be sold off.

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "I know that I can get a team of 4 brilliant developers from the Philippines for the cost of 1 contractor from the UK. I also know that I dont need to be in the same room, building or country as they are for them to work well."

          You've missed an important point. You think they don't need to be in the same room etc. In fact there's a lot to be said for developers - we used to call them analyst/programmers - being able to talk to the people who were doing the work your S/W would be helping them with. That way you would find out what was actually needed. You could maybe fast-prototype something and get feedback.

          Your 1 contractor in the UK, if carefully selected, working with the end user will be worth the money. The actual cost might work out closer than you thought and you'd likely get better value for money via a better product.

  5. ciderbuddy

    Not the Biggest Shock

    I enrolled to gain my PGCE Secondary last september in CS after graduating, and I agrre alot with this article.

    The plans laid out for the curriculum are very ambitious indeed -not unachievable, but very ambitious.

    I agree though that training teachers properly is the only way this will succeed.

    One of my interests in the new curriculum was that it is a chance to build some key soft skills through CS, as well as stronger national skills in maths and problem solving (that was my utopian dream anyway )

    CS can be the driest subject in the world to both learn and teach - they require a level of curiosity, and at the moment schools seem to be teaching them as if they are teaching times tables in a Victorian factory school.

    Get the kids working together to solve problems -computer science is not just coding!

    The other mistake I have seen alot is that they use the computers for everything they do. Students don't need to record their binary homework on a word document, and then encouraged to save it within a file structure that is meaningless. I have spent quite a few lessons showing them how to save work - all I wanted to do was give them a pen and paper and stick them in pairs.

    Thanks

    (an ex-student teacher who went back to developing)

  6. MrJOD

    Too Hard? WTF

    Just been through GCSE selection with my son, who adores programming and is confident in Python (and, increasingly, in C#). We spent a long time time looking through the syllabus and exam expectations.

    Our conclusion: it would have been a waste of his time, although he would probably have received a top grade.

    Problems:

    - Use of VB.Net for the course. I, and several other parents (there are quite a number of parents at my son's school who work in the technology sector) queried the sanity of this as a choice - apparently it seems that the more mainstream languages are too challenging for less able students.

    - 100% examination based. This was the real WTF. How can you have a usable qualification in computer science based only on the ability to answer questions about how loops might be used for iteration.

    It seems, talking to parents, that many of the most able students are put off because they perceive the course as boring and the less able see it as too difficult.

    1. ciderbuddy

      Re: Too Hard? WTF

      translate: "mainstream languages are too challenging for less able teachers." The 100% examination thing is also the best way to kill any interest in CS for pupils stone dead.

      When they began phasing the controlled assessments out my tutor was shocked to see things going backwards after they had just starting moving forwards.

      1. ridley

        Re: Too Hard? WTF

        As a teacher I can see why controller assessments were phased out, there was just too much blatant cheating going on. Sadly most of it was by the teachers.

        I made myself very unpopular indeed when I went to the deputy head and said I wanted none of it and would refuse to do what I was seeing going on around me. Strangely enough since then I have never taken another CA but it has made my life difficult as I am not seen as a "team player".

    2. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Too Hard? WTF

      It has changed since my son did it. It was Python and lots of course work.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Too Hard? WTF

      When I did computing at school back in 1975 it was way too hard. Programs were hand punched onto cards and the teacher took them to the local technical college to be run on their mainframe.

      The one exception was when I was allowed to visit the college for a couple of hours one afternoon. I typed my long program (I recall it was playing a patience card game) onto a teletype and took the resulting roll of punched paper tape to the hallowed computer room for the white coated operator. Unspeaking he took my tape offering and fed it through a tape reader into a collection bin. I expected the line printer to burst into life but it didn't. He fished the end of the tape out of the bin and wound it back up with a tape winder. Perhaps he needed to press some button to make my program run and start printing the results? Instead he handed me the rolled up tape and uttered the words "Parity error" and turned away. My audience was over.

      Too Hard? WTF

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: Too Hard? WTF

        Same period, same computing. But we were also given and IBM teaching computer. It looked like one of their tills, even the same red colour. And at lunch times we spent our time entering codes that would make the machine "take the contents of cell xx and add it to the contents of cell yy. Place the result in cell aa".

        When years later I finally got my Acorn Electron I had all the skills I needed to write code in BBC BASIC and more usefully, assembly language. But would I have taken computing as an 'o' level subject? Not a chance. That would have made the fun into work. I've been an amateur with some semi-professional IT involvement for most of my career. largely because I had those skills in a time when they were rare. That's very different from kids today being asked to train as code monkeys from the ages of 10, whether or not they want to make it their lives. (Or even whether they have any aptitude for it).

    4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Too Hard? WTF

      "apparently it seems that the more mainstream languages are too challenging for less able students."

      The downside of results based targets.

      What school in their right mind is going to encourage students onto "hard" courses when results are everything?

    5. oolitic

      Re: Too Hard? WTF

      VB.Net fits the GCSE specification better than most languages, as well as having a respectable IDE. Remember this is not about "learning a language", it's about learning the fundamental programming constructs and using them to solve problems. The language is there to demonstrate and illustrate the concepts, which can be awkward when (for example) they need to understand arrays but then write stuff in Python which doesn't have them.

      Most specs are not 100% exam based, was it WJEC you were looking at? It's come down in the new specifications - the main ones (OCR and AQA) used to be 60% coursework, but only 20% now (probably because there were loopholes in the coursework admin that you could drive a high-scoring bus through...).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Too Hard? WTF

        "Python which doesn't have them"

        lol what

        "probably because there were loopholes in the coursework admin that you could drive a high-scoring bus through"

        It's because Michael Gove didn't believe coursework was real work.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When you deskill for 40 years and then promote outsourcing to other countries....

    ....what value does a local qualification hold?

    Worse, since GCSE computing has become more like RSA business studies with all the emphasis being on using Microsoft products, advertising and presentations but virtually nil on how computers actually work so you have skills that are independant from vendors then what do you expect?

    Then we try to revert to computing science but use the same BS teachers good plan, my daughter took this as a option and they do not teach how to do anything just refer the kids to the online documentation. So Dad has to help with finding primes but cannot use Sieve of Eratosthenes because that is too far off the expectations.

    If they want computing science again then you are going to have to teach some science, logic, electronics and not use visual basic.

    1. ciderbuddy

      Re: When you deskill for 40 years and then promote outsourcing to other countries....

      You must be looking in the wrong places then as Raspberry Pi is the new focus. M$ package dullness is being pushed out by any school with any sense

      (apart from those cashing oin on BCS's European licence garbage)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: When you deskill for 40 years and then promote outsourcing to other countries....

        You must be looking in the wrong places then as Raspberry Pi is the new focus. M$ package dullness is being pushed out by any school with any sense

        Plenty of RPi at home none at school, a bit of scratch in year 7 but again on Microsoft now year 10, perhaps having the exam before bothering to teach it was optimistic.

        1. ridley

          Re: When you deskill for 40 years and then promote outsourcing to other countries....

          I agree re the use of Raspberry Pi's (the STEM GCSE looks pretty bad though) but the Raspberry Pi foundation are not helping school's by making the RaPi Zero only available singularly.

          I want to fit out a lab and using Zero's would be a considerable saving but it is hardly an option when you order one at a time.

          Why don't they just charge a few quid more or subcontract the manufacturing out? I will bet that there are loads of manufacturers that would love to mass produce them.

    2. oolitic

      Re: When you deskill for 40 years and then promote outsourcing to other countries....

      GCSE computing has never been as you describe. That's pretty much what ICT became, which is why the whole thing got rejigged in the first place.

      Teacher skills are definitely a problem.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HTTP is where it's at...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Black Helicopters

      HTTPS is where it's at.

      FTFY

      1. bob, mon!

        Methinks you're conflating http/https with html.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Someone thinks that page description markup has to do with CS.

          LaugingGirls.jpg

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            "Someone thinks that page description markup has to do with CS"

            Of course it does. Rory Cellan-Jones says it's "coding" so it must be right.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I think I discombobulated.

      2. ridley

        Don't be daft our web filtering system would have a fit with 100's of kids producing HTTPS.

  9. ratfox
    WTF?

    computer science graduates regularly top the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency's unemployability rankings.

    In this time and age, it's a pretty damning statement on the quality of the education.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Most computer science courses in the UK are absolute arse. Three years of basic programming classes building up to doing a trivial web app in HTML/CSS, JS and MySQL. Little to no appreciation of algorithms, systems design, language theory, discrete mathematics, statistics, machine architecture, logic, networking, information theory etc. etc.

      They're barely employable as basic code monkeys, let alone proper engineering or ops staff.

      The group of universities in the UK still doing proper CS to a good level at undergraduate is perishingly small.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The group of universities in the UK still doing proper CS to a good level at undergraduate is perishingly small."

        Business thought it didn't need anything more than mouse clickers and now find themselves unable to compete so want to turn the clock back.

        Oh the irony, who is going to teach CS when the last batch of real CS students are now retiring, assuming they are still in the country.

        Something they clearly didnt teach in the "must have" business studies is that just in time business models only work if you maintain your infrastructure and you wrote it off as too expensive.

        I guess they are going to have to outsource that too.

      2. oolitic

        Which is pretty scary, as all of that stuff is in the A Level.

  10. Alister

    The number of pupils signing up for GCSE computing has plateaued just years after the qualification was introduced, raising concerns that not enough is being done to help teachers with more difficult courses

    Because it's the teachers' fault, not the fact that the course is completely crap, and any pupil looking at their GCSE choices will instantly recognise that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      If my education is anything to go by, it's both lack of focus/understanding in planning what is to be taught, and lack of training for the teachers expected to teach it.

      It tended to be, "HTML is a good thing, oh Adobe sell stuff, put that in there" planning, when CS was the new thing and we were given 2 weeks for the project, and the teacher was not even given a book to teach from, just assumed to have the knowledge from thin air/experience... when their experience was as an artist (hence being put into the web design class, because they are the same thing, right, art and web design ;) ).

    2. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      "not the fact that the course is completely crap"

      The curriculum looked pretty broad and better structured than the computing module of my Physics and Computing degree (admittedly that was 80s vintage)

      https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/397550/GCSE_subject_content_for_computer_science.pdf

      Bearing in mind this is a GCSE, and my degree module was pretty much 6809 Assembler, Pascal, and Modula-2, with none of the problem solving or real world considerations that are included in the GCSE curriculum.

      I don't think the GCSE course is crap, I'm just sceptical about where it leads, if there aren't 'A' Levels to choose that are broad enough to not be obsolete upon completion, but useful enough in a vocation it's not been time well spent. Maybe we need to change the focus from the academic path, to more apprenticeships, and have employers mold some education paths.

  11. Richard 12 Silver badge

    Meaningless statistic unfortunately.

    I expect better from El Reg.

    What is the change relative to the total number of pupils taking any GCSEs?

    If the total number of pupils taking any GCSEs has fallen or is flat this year, then that would actually mean Computing GCSE is in a major boom.

    Rather like the reason class sizes fell under Mr Bliar was because of fewer kiddywinks, not better funding.

    Demographics my dear commentards, demographics.

  12. a_mu

    pointers ,

    My kids school,

    talked to teacher, they did not do C or C++

    did not know what a pointer was,

    But knew all about Python,

    till you asked them a question, then if it was not in the text book, no hope.

    Kids learnt more in two weeks placement than they did in two years at school.

    one even said if they had been taught like that at school, they would have 'got it', and carried it on ..

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: pointers ,

      Is this a song by Tom Waits.

  13. x 7

    A-levels

    Whats possibly more disturbing is the low computer science takeup at A-level

    There are ten kids in my son's group at school, the first year of sixth form. Three of them are doing OK, the rest just seem to be making up the numbers and are struggling. The school has already decided to abandon the course: my sons group will be the last. Why? Because the majority of the kids simply are not up to it. The three who are doing well are all self-taught (they're also all on a 4-A level / extra maths regime) and actually end up teaching the other kids. My son has to help the teacher with web programming.........

    No disrespect to the lecturers, but they are being expected to teach a subject which they barely know themselves

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: A-levels

      "No disrespect to the lecturers, but they are being expected to teach a subject which they barely know themselves"

      For some reason, this seems to have been a failing in anything involving teaching computers in UK schools going back many years. I wonder if they put physics teachers into the job with little to no training in physics as opposed to teaching? I wonder if this is an extension of "oh, computers, I don't much about them and I don't want to" badge of honour at the hiring level?

      At O level, we got maths teachers. One was doing the pilot A level while teaching us O level. We all learned a lot together because both he and we were interested. At A level we got a Systems Analyst from the local council IT/Mainframe dept. on secondment. She was great and really knew her stuff! Those sorts of teachers seem to be few and far between in current teaching. Or maybe it's all the keystages, ongoing assessments and paperwork taking up too much of their time.

  14. kmac499

    Practical Option

    I've said this before in a similar thread

    Dear HMG

    Considering the success of the Raspberry Pi foundation at training trainers.

    Give them a cheque for a few million and walk away,

    Don't interfere, Don't ask for KPI's (or whatever the latest buzz phrase is) just fund competent people.

    Exasparated of Tonbridge

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Practical Option

      It's true, but nobody is going to listen.

  15. batfastad

    School

    I count computing as a hobby. I spend all day at work working with computers then most of my evening doing the same. A relative chucking out their Acorn Electron. Programming, writing+reading data from casette tapes, moving to a PC, more programming, upgrading, fixing, programming, databases, programming, networking, servers etc.

    The very reason I liked mucking about with computers from a young age was because it WASN'T taught formally at school. I could follow my fascination and learn on my own. Though there was a GCSE in IT which covered basic programming in BASIC IIRC.

    What did I do at Uni? Archaeology and Latin. What do I do as a job? Yeah, not those.

  16. Richard Simpson

    My daughter wanted to do GCSE Computing but can't!

    My daughter is in year nine of one of the country's top girl's grammar schools. This year her computing was reduced from one period a week to half a period a week. Never the less, she put it down as her first choice of optional GCSE. Unfortunately, she was one of only eight girls to choose this option and the school decided not to run the course. She is now going to do French instead and is very disappointed.

    Given that my daughter's school is selective and highly academic, it seems unlikely that the perceived difficulty of the subject would have been a major barrier. In my daughter's opinion (and speaking to her friends) the reduction of time allocated to the subject in year 9 meant that the teacher didn't have time to explain the concepts properly and thus many of the girls lost interest.

    It is worth noting that in a nation which desires to produce significantly more digitally skilled workers, the school still found time for an entire period of Religious Education every week!!!

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: My daughter wanted to do GCSE Computing but can't!

      "My daughter is in year nine of one of the country's top girl's grammar schools...She is now going to do French instead and is very disappointed."

      Maybe they are still under the impression that they are training up future diplomats and senior civil servants wives?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yet another year & yet another article about the teaching of computing in UK schools

    Here's a radical idea, dont bloody teach it!

    Seriously do we need schools teaching in very substandard and backwards ways how to use MS Office? or worse how to program badly?

    Schools should focus on teaching pupils a good grounding in Maths, the 3 Primary Sciences & English. If we put more funding into those and made 'computing' an after school/lunchtime class that allowed exploration and experimentation with computers then we would get better skilled people as a result.

    tldr; You cant build castles in the sky, if you arent standing on solid ground

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "Schools should focus on teaching pupils a good grounding in Maths, the 3 Primary Sciences & English."

      Actually the computing could be woven into those.

      Back in the blimey-is-it-nearly-60-years-ago days at school the physics lab had a couple of spectroscopes with diffraction gratings. Working out how to get the 2nd order image of the sodium doublet and at least the first order of the neon that was present in the sodium lamb was a grounding for serious experimental work in later life. Now imagine if such kit (assuming schools still have such things) were combined with a stepper motor, a sensor and an RPi to automatically acquire spectra. That's how computing skills could be acquired along with ordinary lessons.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Great idea, my objections are to 'computing' or 'IT/ICT' taught as discreet subjects

        rolling them into other lessons for practical applications is a great idea, and of course as you'll see I did suggest that after school or lunchtime or other extra activity time is set aside for giving pupils the chance to experiment and play with computers under *hopefully* the watchful eye of someone who knows about them and can help them, but importantly is not a 'classroom' or other academic setting of learning - ie the kids should decide what to try with the computers and the teachers should help/assist as required (much like the computer clubs of the 60s etc)

        1. 's water music
          Headmaster

          The better part of valour...

          Great idea, my objections are to 'computing' or 'IT/ICT' taught as discreet subjects

          If you don't keep it discreet you will scare off the cool kids. It workers have never been well known as style role models.

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          "after school or lunchtime or other extra activity time is set aside for giving pupils the chance to experiment and play with computers under *hopefully* the watchful eye of someone who knows about them and can help them, but importantly is not a 'classroom' or other academic setting of learning"

          That's where my electronics hobby came from. There was some basics of electronics in Physics (more electrics, really) and various bits of transistor and logic gate theory in Comp. Studies, but actual electronics construction with real soldering irons was a school club every Tues evening and everyone was doing something different. Not a class of 30 all building the same traffic light controller!

          1. ridley

            It does;t happen as much nowadays as teachers just do not have the time available to lend to open ended projects when they have all the marking and prep and are "encouraged" to attend after school intervention/tuition/revision sessions all the time.

      2. ridley

        What like this you mean?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j0sAD11x_0

        I have built one and used it when teaching Science, also the version that use the kids smartphones to do the detecting. There is endless scope for STEM but it is often encouraged as you are "not following the Scheme of Work" etc.

        Also the departments tend to be very territorial and although they talk about cooperation in reality they do little voluntarily. Getting the D&T department to let me use the 3D printers is more than their job is worth as I am in Science and Computing. It is all very sad.

  18. Terry 6 Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Lets be realistic

    Poorly trained teachers may well contribute to low take-up But this is unlikely to be the main reason.

    More to the point, the idea that utilitarian teaching will lead to skilled workers is both wrong and inappropriate. It's wrong because education should be, and needs to be, about teaching kids to reason, analyse, apply knowledge, think. It is not about teaching working class kids how to do useful jobs. When I was at school we all had to do woodwork and metalwork - subjects for working class kids that were supposed to start working with our hands to make stuff. (BTW the girl's school over the road learnt to cook and sew). Total waste of fu**ing time. It was about telling kids to have low expectations and no aspirations. Inappropriate because, unlike woodwork, you can't just carry on to become a better programmer, by adding mechanical skills on top of mechanical skills until they reach 21.

    From the kids' point of view, unless they happen to be really enthusiastic at doing stuff with computers why would they use one of their precious GCSE choices for this when the academic subjects offer so much more? How many 15 year old kids even know what they want to study in sixth form, let alone in uni, or what job to aim for.

    In other words, WHY THE F*CK WOULD THEY CHOOSE TO STUDY COMPUTING?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Lets be realistic

      "When I was at school we all had to do woodwork and metalwork - subjects for working class kids that were supposed to start working with our hands to make stuff."

      I have a certain degree of sympathy with this point of view. Yes we had that sort of class and school and I discovered that basically I wasn't much good at it.

      And yet an attitude that if you want stuff you can make it is important. I acquired it not so much from school as from my dad. Right now I'm sitting in the house that he built; not had built but built himself (OK, over the years I mixed a fair bit of mortar, concrete and Thistle by hand). Because he'd grown up with that attitude and also had the aptitude to go with it. Roll forward to post-grad times and, after a week's introductory FORTRAN (the first day of it missed because SWMBO and self hadn't got back from a week's field work) I discovered that if I wanted a program I could and did write it myself; I'd finally discovered an aptitude to go with the attitude. I eventually built a second career out of that.

    2. oolitic

      Re: Lets be realistic

      "teaching kids to reason, analyse, apply knowledge, think" - that's secondary computing right there.

    3. dale smith

      Re: Lets be realistic

      Not poor teaching but expectations that anyone can teach or up skill from ICT to Computer Science. Also the idea that one hour a week of Computing at keystage 3 and up to 3 for GCSE will result in the same level of attainment as Maths or English that get as many as five hours a week throughout a pupils life at school. Computing departments have been decimated since 2012, a quick look on TES shows you how important schools view the subject, just 64 posts advertised in the UK(180 maths teachers needed, 200 English), yet we are told there are not enough trained staff. Seems low for a subject that is compulsory at all key stages

  19. Baldrickk

    I skipped everything to do with computers at GCSE

    At the time, the school only did ICT. Which was "here's how you type into Word!" style teaching. Discussed with teachers when I made my selection, and they agreed that the class wouldn't help me.

    I took on computing at A-Level - at a College that offered both Computing and ICT courses, and then went on to do a CS degree.

    ICT at my school was always seen as a 'dos' subject* so as soon as it gets technical, I'm not suprised that other choices are made. RE was always popular for this reason too. You really do need competent teachers too, who know the subject they are trying to teach. If you don't have that, you lose the kids who want to be challenged and find that the class just doesn't stimulate them enough. It becomes boring and they will prefer to do something else.

    * easy and not requiring effort. Pun not intended.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      Re: I skipped everything to do with computers at GCSE

      One of my classmates did not do any work in an RE lesson. Turns up for the exam, gets 100%. :P

  20. EnviableOne

    the only Computing teaching needed is how to use it efficiently as a tool.

    Programing is advanced Decision and Descrete mathematics

    CompSci is advanced Digital Electronics (part of any physics course)

    Information Systems is advance statistics

    if all of these (Decision and Descrete mathematics, statistics and Electronics) are taught well, kids will come out of school with the right background to go into specific fields and do well.

    there is no need for specifc ICT course at school, it just clouds the issue. You will get better experts if thy are taught from the basics before they apply that skill to a specific field.

  21. Ian Bremner

    It's going in circles.

    This looks similar to the SCE O Level I started to do back in '87.

    I saty started because3 halfway throught he 2 yer course it switched to the GCSE which, at the time, was pretty much "This is how to use a spreadsheet"

    So I, for one, am glad to see it going back to teaching the fundamentals of how computers work and basic coding practices.

  22. oolitic

    Intrigued that Bill Mitchell thinks the computing GCSE is three years old - the OCR spec has been around since 2012. One thing not mentioned in here is that the specs have all been redesigned for this year, and some schools thinking of starting the GCSE may have waited for the new spec rather than start with one that only has a year to run.

    Anyway, our school's GCSE numbers are 60% up for next year, so something's working :)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      A 60% increase is great, we have a 50% decrease. Mainly because I have told students that the vast majority of the work they will do will not require them to be on a computer. Many initially choose Computing thinking that they could spend hours on end searching the internet for daft games to play, the realisation of working in a book was far too much for some of them.

  23. Naselus

    Supply and Demand

    The thing that jumped out at me from the article is this:

    "as many as 70 per cent of secondary school computer science teachers could be lacking a relevant computer science background to teach at GCSE level"

    Is this really surprising to anyone? A teacher starts on £27k a year, needs a specialist Master's degree, and like most of the public sector have been held under significant pay restraint in recent years. Meanwhile, a second-rate comp sci grad can expect to be on £40k a year six months after leaving uni. And most Comp Sci people were not exactly the popular kids at school, either.

    So the deal on offer would appear to be 'why not spend another year at university so that you can earn 30% less money doing a job with fewer benefits in a building you've spent 5 years being conditioned to hate?". And then we wonder why the top-tier talents aren't falling all over themselves to go for it.

  24. dale smith

    Why bash the teacher?

    Teachers did not ask for a new curriculum, teachers did not ask to teach ICT courses that slowly turned from a broad based course too one that focused on office automation. The change came about as industry cried " These kids are not skilled enough, all they learn is MS office!". I have read all the reports of students not picking Computing GCSE, however, I have also read the University of Roehampton report stating how many schools bother actually offering it, and here is the rub. Whilst Computing is an EBacc subject so are the other three sciences, maths, English, languages and history/geography. If a school is having good results with the standard EBacc subjects why even offer Computing? Please do not try tell me all teachers are crap, I hold a Computing Degree(from a Russel Group Uni) and MBCS, I have worked in industry (and didn't like it, and I do not like programming). Don't bash the teachers, bash the policy makers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why bash the teacher?

      When computing science changed to computer studies many good teachers left in disgust and again when it went to ICT. As the subject was deskilled and removed "difficult components" to add more and more business components i.e. buzzwords and bovine excrement then you had an influx of people who had taken humanities subjects and avoided higher math/science.

      If you increasingly use teachers without the scientific/technical or mathematic aptitude to teach a subject of that type then yes, the teachers cannot be held wholy to blame.

      That it used to be a requirement for teachers to have at least a degree in the subject they taught and this requirements removal is where the problem lies. It could also be argued that the UK produces too many "humanities" graduates for the number of jobs availible that require their higher level of learning.There are after all only so many companies requiring Geography graduates to colour in maps, Business Studies graduates to find companies who believe BS, English Literature/History/Politics/Philosophy/Religion/Art graduates to become teachers in their subject, etc.So why are we producing so many graduates who have spent at least 3 years studying a subject that they cannot get a job in? The same now applies to many technical subjects where we train people up to leave the country because there just isn't any work in the in their fields here anymore when buyin/outsource as the need arises is allowed

      It would be reasonable to conclude that the Government, teaching bodies, universities and voters are more to blame than the people who took jobs teaching a subject they did not understand or were qualified in. The latter could not have got into their now difficult position without the former making it possible.

      So yes the teachers are less to blame than everyone else.

  25. Phukov Andigh Bronze badge

    people who thought "getting into computers" meant easy money

    just like all those who got their Web Developer certs and flooded Silicon Valley over a decade ago. Sock puppet dot-coms and other stories of Money for Nothin' (Dire Straits in your head now?) drove up interest till the Dot Com Bomb.

    Recently big hype in "Coding" as some sort of panacea, where kids were lead to believe easy shifts in air conditioned offices, working with beanbag chairs and Smart Executives Who Get You, free parking for your Fixies and Craft Beer brewed on site, and complimentary trimming of your hipster beard were the truth about Working With Computers.

    Reality, not so much, and not for the vast majority. A life of "contract" positions, promises unfulfilled, and the same "stupid bosses" as every other field, along with finding that coding is pretty much an antisocial game at worst, and at best, just another job, lessens interest.

    the oft predicted glut of "coders" also turned it into a "buyers' market" where even those high profile positions became less valuable as fresh "geniuses" could be hired for a lot less, made it even less desirable to "the youth". Not to mention many kids have parents in that field and have seen the reality.

    Add in the ability for "work from home" to become "replaced by overseas contractor" and the competition for primo coding slots becoming WORLD wide, those who aren't as good as their school teachers praised them of being, find themselves overlooked. When Google or Apple put up a position, the very Best of the Best of the world apply. And only so many "studies" and complaints about "racism" or "sexism" can get someone hired when their A game simply is not world-class. Its like the Olympics, the Superbowl, the NBA Championships around here.

    And like big sports, no matter how many thousands of students you run thru Podunk or Big City High's basketball team, and all the trophies you got "getting to State", there's one Steph Curry. (or KD). Even your LeBron's end up not getting the plum jobs here all the time.

    And that's before we even examine issues of "aptitude" or "desire" when discussing education based emphasis on a single career type.

  26. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Utilitarian teaching

    The purpose of education is to educate, It is not to train kids for jobs. Once they are educated people can learn the skills they need to do jobs. Which is why studying a geography degree is not so that you get a job colouring in maps. But narrowly trained people can only do the jobs they are trained for. Teaching computer science in school has to be judged in the same way as English or Art. Whether it makes people better thinkers, more creative, better at understanding etc. And then needs to be focussed at kids who will enjoy it for its own sake. It should not be a conveyor belt to make lots of computer workers. That is both wrong in educational terms and unlikely to be effective in economic terms.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Then maybe schools should start letting Students take it. For GCSE I applied to do Computer Science but wasn't allowed to take the subject despite me having some programming knowledge in LUA and a decent Maths grade, although people who are now gettings Ds and Us were allowed in. Instead I was forced to take a useless design course. Although I'm hoping to take it for A-Levels because I either want to be a Robotics Engineer or Programmer.

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