Creative Economy Blog

A nation of technology creators

Hasan Bakhshi and Juan Mateos-Garcia - 13.01.2012

It was inevitable that Michael Gove's BETT speech earlier this week would steal the thunder of The Royal Society's report on computing in schools which was launched today.

Yet, it is still shocking to hear the statistics: a 53% drop in the numbers of UK students taking A-level Computing over the past eight years, and the fact that only 35% of ICT teachers in England have a post-A level qualification that is relevant to the subject. Many of the young people the review team spoke to said that they knew more about ICT than their teachers did.   

The Royal Society joins what has become a chorus in recommending that ICT as a subject is dropped from the curriculum. But it suggests it is replaced by three distinct new subjects: Digital Literacy, Computer Science and Information Technology. Digital literacy, The Royal Society argues, is a basic skill that should be compulsory for all students, at least until 14. Computer Science and Information Technology, in contrast, are rigorous disciplines and as such should be offered as optional subjects to all young people at GCSE. In Next Gen, we went further and called for a rigorous GCSE in computer science to be included in the English Baccalaureate, something Mr Gove finally agreed to consider this week.

The Royal Society rightly stresses the urgent need for more qualified teachers. It is true that there exist low-cost training options and enormous goodwill amongst educators and industry to solve this problem. But passion goes only so far on its own. There will need to be an aggressive campaign using training bursaries to recruit teachers with the right computing expertise, just as has been done with other essential subjects like physics and chemistry.