Why our National Curriculum is a National Joke and how the teaching of IT in the UK needs an overhaul
Louise Kidney asks: Who will drive change and the needed evolution of technology in the UK if the teaching of Information Technology remains fundamentally flawed?
Ask any 13 year old child what computers mean to them and I am sure you will not find mention of any of the following: word processing, safe and secure storage, data protection, flowcharts and legalities.
Sounds dry, doesn’t it? Provokes the question, why so serious, even?
Yet believe it or not, the 2010 rerelease by Edexcel of their IT GCSE features all of those things. If you’re lucky, by the end of the course you might be able to produce a website. But it will be a basic website, it wont play well with other websites and you’ll probably have fallen asleep by the end of most lessons.
Reflections of reality
Compare and contrast to the web we all know and love. One where the conversations and discussions flow, where the answers can always be found. A place where knowledge is free, self teaching is rife, Wikipedia is our go-to for almost every question known to man and we can get, should we want to, free films, free books and free music. One which has evolved through the last 20 plus years to be the conduit for massive change, perhaps the biggest change since the industrial revolution. Our world owes a lot to a certain Brit – he enabled internet shopping, dot com crashes, Crackberries, social media communication and social media revolutions.
And yet we tell our young people none of these things.
Content is key
The badge slapped onto the GCSE is actually quite encouraging. Unit 1 – Living in the digital world. Unit 2 – Using digital tools. Unit 3 – Digital design. Unit 4 – Creating digital products. On the surface, you would expect Using digital tools to cover a plethora of funky tech from fingerprint accessed security, to advances in touchscreen displays, from Facebook and how it’s being used for work based activities to keeping yourself safe on Twitter.
Instead, the Student Guide to this unit, apart from being almost unreadable, contains some notable gems such as ‘How to create a high-strength, maximum security password’ or ‘How to select the optimum model mobile phone for a range of different usage requirements’.
Yes. You did read that right. Our teachers, in our schools, are going to be teaching 15 and 16 year olds how to pick a mobile phone. May I humbly suggest that perhaps by this point every child in the class will already be quite versed in making this decision and that perhaps 1 in 1000 of those taking the GCSE will ever be responsible for procurement of work mobile phones after they have endured this woeful subject? And who on earth decided that the word optimum was an appropriate word to use on a flyer which was obviously intended to be funky and cool?
No. Instead of cool, it screams ‘we’ve dressed up the most boring soul destroying parts of our curriculum in this cool funky wrapper and are hoping you wont actually read any of it’.
These boots are made for walking (and voting)
But who am I to bemoan things as a 30+ woman in IT? Well, don’t take it just from me. As this article from last year states, 17% of teenagers voted with their feet last year. Even taking into account that they may have been offered only the old syllabus, which contained such gems as teaching teenagers how to use word processing software, this figure is terrifying.
Which leaves the government with an few interesting problems. The first is that 2.49 unemployed people is a big number and reducing it requires those people being equipped with the right skill sets. Did they leave school with them?
Then there’s the glowing vision of a UK competitor to silicon valley recently launched by the ConDem government. We have the emerging skills now to staff some startups and the upcoming Silicon Milkroundabout will not struggle to find eager young developers hunting for the right someone to harness their bright eyed enthusiasm.
The future’s bleak
But where will the future enthused talent come from? Who will drive change and the needed evolution of technology in this country if not todays schoolchildren? If IT delivered in school makes no mention of the code which drives the software we use, makes no mention of the communication revolution happening right beneath out feet, how can we expect any of those schoolchildren to aspire to work one day for the next Spotify or Huddle?
And finally, as one couple with a fledgling young coder pointed out to me – where is the alternative teaching for those children who do not only know where the on switch is, but in all likelihood where the Police National Computers on switch is too? What provision for exceptionally bright young coders? Are we incubating the next wave of hackers and security risks because we are not offering the opportunity to do more positive and aspirational things with the skills learnt through self teaching in their bedrooms?
10 years ago, these were policy questions. Today they have moved into the must be answered category. Otherwise we risk a new decade of brain drain and no seat around the table in the new power struggle of digital economies.
11:36 pm 21st March, 2011
The UK’s idea of IT teaching is beyond a joke. Students are taught one platform, normally Windows, whilst the other’s are ignored. (Most students don’t know Linux exists, or how a Mac works, let alone how to use them in real life.)
The world of IT has changed, but the way it has taught, and who it is taught by, hasn’t. We no longer write and print correctly formatted letters, we send short, sweet, elegant emails.
We don’t use boring spreadsheets and antiquated to track things, we use specialised services (like FreeAgent, Bento, etc).
IT should be about how Information and Technology can be used to benefit ourselves, and the rest of humanity. We should be teaching students how to use a range of products, how to get the most from them, and what to do to keep them working.
We should be injecting the education with a sense of fun, and enjoyment; not sapping all of that out of everything.
I am hoping to work with a local school to remedy this partially, and build this into my next project.
12:05 am 21st March, 2011
Whilst I agree on the most part, the IT GCSE is still relevant. Although it doesn’t teach students about ‘modern’ technology, it does teach them in the field of databases, spreadsheets, and businesses. The subject is important in that respect, and will surely help students get into business sections of many industries.
Perhaps ‘Business Studies’ would be a more appropriate name for the GCSE, but I stand by the fact that it isn’t obsolete. I did the IT GCSE myself, and unsurprisingly came out with an A*. It certainly taught me things I didn’t already know, and wouldn’t have learned without it, even though it was incredibly easy. If I ever chose to enter a business type job, some of the things I learnt would certainly help. Most, but not all IT jobs revolve around coding etc.
12:09 am 21st March, 2011
(It does need serious revamping or atleast updating however.)
12:21 am 21st March, 2011
The thing that depresses me most is the focus on “programming” and “coding”. IT is about programming the same way accountancy is about arithmetic.
What’s really needed is to get the next generation a proper understanding of *data*. What it is, what it’s not, what you can and can’t do with it.
To misuse a charity slogan from a few years ago: Data is for Life. Applications are for Christmas.
PS. Oh, and as for “not using boring spreadsheets”, well I hate to say it but Microsoft Excel is now the world’s #1 development environment…
12:22 am 21st March, 2011
Hi there. I’m a 14 year old studying the exact course you just mentioned. I’m also a young coder. I can vouch that there is very little support for someone of my age who knows more about a computer then how to make a pretty spreadsheet. Infact, when I put weeks worth of code into a full ajax portfolio, my teacher didnt care. The IT GCSE needs a major reform and fast.
12:25 am 21st March, 2011
There has been a change towards merging IT and Business Studies into one subject, as evidenced in some schools.
The issues lies in the IT being taught in schools being applied IT, instead of the full computing, etc, that our country is starting to lack.
Whilst some of the stuff taught in IT is valid, a large proportion isn’t. Being taught how to make a 1990s style website, using tables and dreamweaver/frontpage, is not at all handy in the modern world. Making a powerpoint presentation that is just a facsimile of what you are going to say, and is 1,000,000 words per slide, is no use to anyone.
These are some of the things being taught, including at A level. And this needs to change. Applied ICT needs to become part of business, as that is where it belongs. IT needs to become more orientated towards computer science skills, or using Information and Technology in the real world.
Part of this change needs to be teaching people how to use technology properly. How to understand what it may ask you to do. And that involves things such as syncing devices, setting up email, etc. This basic level of knowledge is missing (I know, I see it everyday); and that is a tragedy.
12:28 am 21st March, 2011
@Sam – I agree with the sense of fun and enjoyment – very much. I remember vividly a science lesson (I only did Single Award, whole separate world of pain) where someone strung a piece of string down a field and shot a rocket along it. I hated Science but I never forgot that lesson. Where is the equivalent of that ‘holy hell’ moment? Or, rather, inside this syllabus, where is the space allowed for the teacher to momentarily turn into magician and go ‘ta da!’. Because the syllabus is vague and yet specific. It guides and yet it waves hands. Which in and of itself worries me because then, where is the consistency of experience even?
@Jack – Again I agree. It makes some assumptions of lack of prior knowledge which I don’t believe it can or should any more. I think it should be rebranded because no IT Department in the country would recognise the skill sets delivered within that course. However, they would be grateful to have users who were clued up enough to pick sensible passwords. My personal feeling is that setting a decent password is no longer an IT skill. It is a life skill. To be allowed to go out into the big wide world without that skill is similar to not having cooking or budgeting skills. But it is not IT.
12:38 am 21st March, 2011
@Sam GCSE students aren’t taught to make a basic website anyway, but you say that ‘full computing’ is not being taught at GCSE level ICT, but does it really need to be?
People who take the ICT course at GCSE level are likely expecting something more exciting and indepth than spreadsheets, but what they are taught still is useful. But there’s other students who do ICT because they’re looking for a job in business or finance. If full computing was a part of this course, it would be an unnecessary skill for those pupils, as coding isn’t normally required in a business oriented job.
A computing course should be offered at GCSE, but not built into the ICT course. The ICT course needs reforming, but it still serves its purpose of educating in business aspects.
12:40 am 21st March, 2011
@Nathaniel Props to you for taking up coding at such a young age, it’ll certainly give you a head start if you choose to do computing at A Level. Even if you keep it as a hobby it’ll remain useful.
Your teacher should atleast show some praise towards you, an entire ajax portfolio certainly deserves it. But clearly he / she studied this IT course and knows nothing of coding
12:46 am 21st March, 2011
Having completed my GCSE in ICT last year i can safely say it was one of the most boring things I’ve ever done, it was boring because i could do everything and learnt nothing. There were people in my class, however, who could barely turn a computer on, this is why i think ICT (and other subjects, for that matter) may benefit from streaming the same way as English, Maths and Science are. People with lower ability would get more support and the people with higher ability would be taught more complicated things and be allowed to experiment with their work more.
I realize this is just a pointless fantasy, but i felt i should contribute my opinion.
9:43 am 21st March, 2011
@nathaniel – apologies for not replying last night, I couldn’t see your comment. I suspect in the future you will be one of the parents whose child, should things stay the same, will not be sitting the IT GCSE. Which is a shame, you’ve obviously got a tonne of passion and talent in ‘IT’ but to advance in the stream through A level and onto degree level are forced to endure 2-3 years of passion killing syllabus.
@tony – there has to be a focus on developing or coding because data has to sit ‘in’ something. What in actual fact really is needed, is an acknowledgement that IT is now so broad a church that to attempt to condense it into one narrow catch all GCSE is impossible. Either that, or as @beth has suggested, stream skill levels in this area. In doing some research for this article I did notice there are a number of GCSE’s on offer in this area, though I think not offered by EdExcel. But of course the schools decision to offer these multiple specialisms of ‘IT’ will depend on the schools understanding that there would be a requirement, on funding and on a teacher being available to deliver the syllabus.
@beth – I feel your pain. Did you take the IT GCSE as a pre-requisite to being allowed to take A levels?
11:16 am 21st March, 2011
I agree, IT needs to be merged with business, and offer a completely separate computing course at GCSE.
@Tony You’ve got it completely wrong, and as a student currently studying this course, I can say, without a doubt, programming has not come into it once, not even in the slightest.
@Jack as @Sam said, making a website with frontpage/dreamweaver is actually a huge part of Unit 2, your supposed to make a portfolio for all your work in one of the two (I did it from code as I hate both the products). And yes, they did use those tables that are practically forbidden from the modern web. And I actually convinced my school to let me do the computing A level already. Problem is, my teacher for it has left so I’m stuck in a computer room with no clue what I’m supposed to be doing during lesson time. And people who want to work in business, should take business, not IT/ICT or whatever they call it at their school. Nearly everyone who has commented so far shares the view that IT be merged into business, and computing fill the hole that it leaves.
@Luise No problem, I was asleep for most of it anyway. I have a feeling that the IT GCSE won’t stay the same for very long, in simple, it can’t.
12:38 pm 21st March, 2011
@Nathaniel I may have studied under a different exam board to you then, my course didn’t even mention a website, ours was all based around databases and spreadsheets.
People who want to work in business *need* to take IT / ICT though, since many schools don’t offer a solely business course, and IT is the closest they can get. At A Level, yes that’s different, they should take business studies, but at GCSE they don’t have any other options. I agree that the two should be merged, or atleast a business course offered, and the IT course reformed, I hope it didn’t come across otherwise.
Really unfortunate with your computing teacher too, you got a great opportunity which obviously can’t carry on. But we all have bad experiences with teachers at school, mine lay in Maths: none of my teachers remained for over six months, and so the learning process was changing constantly, often with a teacher hired under pressure just to fill a gap. Terrible.
1:33 pm 21st March, 2011
@Nathanial – you wrote “when I put weeks worth of code into a full ajax portfolio, my teacher didnt care” and that’s the whole crux of the problem IMHO. If the student doesn’t ‘fit the mould’ of the narrow coursework created then they are effectively classed as troublemakers, certainly not encouraged to think out of the box. Is the school system *really* designed to turn out sheep or is it that the previous generation of sheep are now in charge and don’t know any different !
1:49 pm 21st March, 2011
Reading all these comments brings me to another conclusion. If we are teaching ‘sheep’ where is ‘thinking outside the box’ taught?
It seems to me coding a bunch of off curriculum stuff is a flag that someone has the qualities this government has acknowledged we need, not only in the private sector but the public too. Are we crushing it at source?
2:23 pm 21st March, 2011
As someone who sat the very first GCSEs back in the late 80s, I can add that it seems not much has changed.
Back then, the GCSE “Computer Studies” syllabus was basic to say the least. Nathaniel’s comments are very similar to my own experiences; I spent a lot of time playing games of course, but I also spent hours and hours bashing out self-taught hobbyist coding.
When it came to taking my GCSE Options I first got hold of the CS syllabus, realised that a) I already knew everything on it and would be bored to tears and b) I knew more about the subject than the teacher. I ended up taking Electronics instead, then later took CS at A’level.
Whether or not “how to choose a mobile phone” is an appropriate topic for an IT course isn’t really the nub of the problem for me. Rather, the idea that an IT teacher knows more about phones than your average 14 year old is frankly bloody hilarious, and speaks volumes about how short-sighted the authors of that flyer have been.
Having skimmed through the contents of the ICT guide on Amazon’s website though, it’s not all bad. As a computer literacy course it actually looks pretty good (until you dig deeper, anyway. Ring networks? Really?!) For budding computer *users* it’s probably a reasonable grounding. For budding computer engineers, technicians, sysadmins, developers, designers, and everyone else who wants to use ICT for more than MS Office, Facebook and Battlefield 3 however, it’s as irrelevant as it was in 1988.
I wonder, idly, if what’s needed is two subjects; Basic ICT as a lighter core subject, and Advanced ICT covering programming, hardware, development etc.
11:40 pm 21st March, 2011
@Jack You definitely do not need an ICT GCSE to go into business, or even to take business studies at A-level.
I’m led to believe that forty years ago many schools taught “secretary skills”, which included such things as touch typing on typewriters. The ICT GCSE has replaced this in all but name.
Computer Science should include programming, handling data (including input data), basic understanding of OS and hardware, and designing applications**.
This IT knowledge would actually be extremely important for modern businesses. For example, even if your not in an IT company, if you are paying someone for an IT service, you ought to have some vague idea of what the service entails and decide whether their costings are reasonable… else they could be charging (for) anything!
Computers are everywhere, and they should be understood – at least at some basic level – by everyone. Computer Science ought to be core throughout secondary school, just like English, Science and Mathematics.
**It should _not_ test use of word processors or spreadsheets, everyone should have been using them since primary school!
9:33 am 21st March, 2011
@haydoni – Instead of the situation at the moment where everyone is being exhorted to store data in ‘the cloud’ with no comprehension of what is and isn’t appropriate data to be stored there.
I am guessing the IT GCSE’s from all providersare not mentioning IAAS at all. And that’s dangerous.
1:12 pm 21st March, 2011
@haydoni Actually, to be fair, ICT was a Necessary evil for me in Year 7, as the computers in my primary school were severely lacking. For crying out loud, you were lucky if you managed to get permission to go on the internet!!
5:13 pm 21st March, 2011
Ther eis quite a lot of action around this topic. A wiki here http://codingforkids.org/wiki/Main_Page with lots of good links and information, an e-petition http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/teach-our-kids-to-code-e-petition/
We are losing our coding kids to the rest of the world, those who have taught themselves see no reason to reinvest back in their own economy when they have had to teach themselves outside of school, and other countries, eg the US welcome them with open and wealthy arms.
Imagine if every child in the UK had an opportunity to understand computers and build/invent stuff?
Pretty spectacular.
Excuse the brevity of this comment… I am on holiday – but this topic is very close to my heart and raising awareness of it is very important.
11:24 pm 21st March, 2011
As someone who has experience the IT syllabus from all angles: As a student learning it at GCSE, and IT Technician supporting teachers and students as they learn it, and even having taught a lesson to students at that level; I can say this about IT in the UK’s curriculum:
It gives you almost no help in the greater scheme of things.
What should be taught in IT, is the skills to be able to do everything else you need to do, in and out of the curriculum.
There should be a module on basic computer use/maintenance: defragging, formatting, etc. And there should be an option to do a more advanced version.
I spent 2 years of IT doing bugger all work, and came out with an A at GCSE. I was then told, working as a technician, by the teachers that I could probably sit the A-level paper with no problem, and do all the required coursework in a couple of weeks… I am fully self taught beyond this, and have been correcting teachers on IT use since I was 9…
I was betrayed by the IT curriculum, and if it had interested me in coding, etc at a younger age; I’d probably have written some of the awesome ideas i have by now.
8:35 am 21st March, 2011
@emma – Thank you lady. You were the inspiration for this article in posting an email from someone saying they’d found a GCSE too secretarial. I’m not sure if links work on here but the post is: Lazy Layabout Teens
8:09 pm 21st March, 2011
Everyone needs to learn to use basic office applications and general computer literacy. I’ve got no idea which course would be best for them. IT, business, whatever.
What’s needed beyond this is a creative computing course. Something that combines elements of computer science, maths, physics, art and design. It should be assessed 100% on portfolio and taught very much in hands-on, let’s-make-cool-stuff way. Websites, games, data visualisation and hardware hacking should all be included.
9:25 pm 21st March, 2011
Back again, to be the crusty old moaner in the corner
First, some replies to replies.
@Nathaniel – I apologise if I wasn’t clear enough; I didn’t mean the current courses concentrate on programming. I meant that there is an idea around that teaching programming is somehow worthwhile, important and valuable. Sadly, in the grander scheme of things, it isn’t.
@Louise – “There has to be a focus on developing or coding because data has to sit ‘in’ something”. In some ways it might be arguably chicken and egg, but I’d suggest data doesn’t need computers to exist. Programs and software, on the other hand, need data to process, otherwise what would be the point of them ?
@Sam – “We don’t use boring spreadsheets and antiquated to [sic] track things.” Actually, lots of people do. And there’s nothing intrinsically boring about a spreadsheet. It’s only a specific use/narrow interest/lightweight program, after all.
@Sam – “We should be teaching students how to use a range of products…” – that is just about the *last* thing we should be teaching students to do.
To more general matters.
It is a source of real sadness that, 27 years after starting in IT, we still have/need as many programmers as we do. The dream of the formal methods communities of the 70s and 80s was that for the vast majority of software, we would eventually be able to formalise the requirements to the point that the requirements would *be* the program – programmers (outside of the area of operating systems, device drivers and the like) would become much like farriers – once omnipresent and invaluable, now still there and occupied where needed, but in small numbers and invisible/irrelevant to the majority of us. If anything, the IT industry has backpedalled away from that idea at an ever increasing rate since the late 80s/early 90s. Only certain kinds of built-in obsolescence are to be permitted.
@Sam said above, “The world of IT has changed”. Sadly, it really hasn’t. It’s faster, shinier, smaller, more portable – but the *fundamental concepts* haven’t really changed. The basic hardware architecture we use is still John von Neumann’s from 1945. Object oriented programming was first proposed by amiably mad Norwegians in the mid 1960s. The first papers on relational databases appeared in 1968/69. The WIMP GUI has been around since the early/mid 70s. Check out Alan Kay’s Dynabook if you think iPads are anything new. Alan Turing’s Universal Turing Machine (1936) and Alonzo Church’s Lambda Calculus (1932) pre-date digital computers, but compute exactly the same set of functions a modern computer can compute. Donald Knuth’s “Fundamental Algorithms” is still as relevant today as when it was first publish way back when.
The point of all this waffly nostalgia ? That there are core, fundamental concepts to Comput*ing* Science (as distinct from Comput*er* Science) that ought to be introduced as early as possible. The most important results in Computing Science need nothing more technical than paper and a pencil, and they underlie *every* piece of modern shininess. Know the concepts, know the fundamentals, and you’ll be able to pick up and use whatever tools eventually come your way because you’ll understand the *why* rather than the *how*.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
I could go on to bemoan the shift from “education” to “training” and how that suits one very narrow agenda and nothing else, but that’s enough for now
1:19 am 21st March, 2011
Excellent post
7:52 am 21st March, 2011
@adrianshort – agree. I’d still argue setting a secure password is a life skill though, not a ‘you should only know this if you’re vaguely interested in IT’ skill. @harryharold posted a link to a different syllabus on Twitter which looked a little more like what you’re talking about – apparently the school offering it have stopped offering the IT GCSE.
@tonydouglas – your comments and perspective are needed in the wider debate, I think, because you add a wider context to what can end up becoming quite a narrow discussion. The wider picture is, of course, the direction IT as a whole is going and why and who is controlling that agenda. I still see people asking on Twitter about the differences and intricacies of C++, C and C# (I think those terms of reference are correct, I don’t code except HTML). We’re in a situation now where there’s so many languages and what you choose restricts future job opportunities.
@st84photo – Thank you kindly.
12:40 pm 21st March, 2011
I think what we need to remember is that this is only GCSE level IT – something most of these people forget.
The GCSE courses are relatively short, with very little time to teach students so they’re not going to be very in depth and, to be fair to schools, it does teach kids how to do the most basic of tasks on the most popular operating system.
We may give a shit about OS X, Linux, website design etc but do the kids really give a damn? Besides, GCSEs mean nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING.
I think the curriculum should be kept up-to-date, but not go into too much depth. These guys are teachers at high schools, they’re not university professors.
3:08 pm 21st March, 2011
Very good post.
I’m 17 and I dropped out of ICT GCSE because it was the lamest course that I could have ever taken.
The coursework assignment was to make a timetable rota for staff at a cinema.
It was dull to say the least.
I’m actually the co-organiser of a conference in London in December, the Teenweb Conference (teenwebconf.com).
It’s an opportunity for any Teens who are into web development or entrepreneurship to meet other teens and listen to some successful young web developers/entrepreneurs.
It should provide to be a great event and we know that it’ll be a good chance for teens to have a laugh about the national syllabus for ICT and Computing A level or GCSE.
Let’s hope we see some reform soon
6:11 pm 21st March, 2011
@luke – I understand. But from the post beneath yours I feel that there is frustration being expressed at the lack of alternative outlet anywhere for those who enter year 11 with comprehensive understandings of binary or code. There needs to be a parallel framework – there used to be a ‘gifted’ student stream to deal with this. Also, this 34 year old is grateful for her GCSE’s and still regularly has to scratch her head to remember which ones she did and didn’t get an A in.
@henry – I hear you. I think the penny will drop, it’s merely a matter of time and there are some incredibly passionate and connected people campaigning to change this. In the meantime, your web conference sounds like one of the many potential answers to this problem. Good luck with it.
11:08 am 21st March, 2011
I posted the majority of this comment on another post on the matter, but feel it sits just as well here
The UK education system has more wide-ranging issues than inspiring the next generation of computer scientists. When I was at school in the early 00′s, students (in the top sets) would literally set fire to the walls, which meant getting any work done was next to impossible. This was *top-set* students doing nothing but pissing their education away, failing English, Maths and Science.
Then when I was at college we were forced to do Key Skills ICT (because I didn’t do it for GCSE) which was even worse than the Level 3 qualification, as part of it was learning how to bold a title in Word. However, whilst this may be trivial and mundane, I reckon it more accurately reflects computing in the real world than programming does and to ensure everyone knows the basics of the key software packages is more useful to the majority. This was all alongside Maths and Physics A Levels.
Sorry for the life story, but I then did Mechanical Engineering at university, which was one of the most infuriatingly dull things I’ve ever done. Engineering is (for the most part) inherently interesting, but actually *learning* it is something else. It’s “rip your eyes out of your skull” difficult, and the way in which it’s taught crushes your inspiration and excitement. Part of the course was learning in Visual Basic, which whilst an effective language for certain, is hardly something to get modern developers out of bed in the morning.
The only way a better computer sciences course could come into being is if the curriculum was iterated on constantly, however, that makes it difficult on students who tend to rely on past resources to help, makes it expensive for schools that don’t have the budget to change hardware and software continuously and makes assessment a nightmare.
I’m firmly in the “go out there and build shit” camp. I have a loathing for the education system brought on by a decade of deception, disruption and dickheads. The private sector are the ones who want the skilled employees, and if they feel they’re being let down by the state education system, create their own trade-body-accredited courses. Then we can have a system where students have “educational credit” and can use the cash they would have cost the further education system to pay for private education in tailored areas (sort of like Train2Game).
Most of the points on this issue assume that if there were a better course, then a large number of students would jump at the chance to do it. You have to ask yourself, is that a fair assumption?
2:10 am 21st March, 2011
@Steve – lots of points to respond to in there…
“I then did Mechanical Engineering at university, which was one of the most infuriatingly dull things I’ve ever done. Engineering is (for the most part) inherently interesting, but actually *learning* it is something else. It’s “rip your eyes out of your skull” difficult, and the way in which it’s taught crushes your inspiration and excitement.”
This is true of most disciplines, including IT. That’s why they’re called “disciplines”. Part of the apprenticeship is enduring some really boring and apparently pointless nonsense in service of the overall aim.
“Part of the course was learning in Visual Basic, which whilst an effective language for certain, is hardly something to get modern developers out of bed in the morning.”
Modern developers will get out of bed in the morning to work with whichever tools are standard on the sites they’re working and which will get them paid. Sure, we’d all like to use fancy new toys and tools, but at the end of the day, there’s work to be done.
“The only way a better computer sciences course could come into being is if the curriculum was iterated on constantly”
Far from it. The basic fundamental principles, results and methods still apply. Teach those, with reference to how they appear in the fads du jour and there should be little need for the sort of constant revision you describe. Indulging that cycle only reinforces the false idea of rapid churn and change.
“I’m firmly in the “go out there and build shit” camp.”
Then get out of it. Either that, or hope there’s never an IT version of those cowboy builder programs.
“The private sector are the ones who want the skilled employees, ”
No they don’t. They want *trained* employees, and they’d rather not pay for them either – hence the emphasis in producing graduates and school leavers “ready for employment” without requiring employers to pay for expensive product training courses. There’s a world of difference between “skilled” and “trained”.
“if they feel they’re being let down by the state education system, create their own trade-body-accredited courses.”
They try to. In the meantime, they make do with creating things like MCSE, RHCE, NCE and a variety of others. Or influence the direction of university programs – so, for example, the course on databases becomes a course on a specific DBMS product, or a course on operating systems becomes a course on a specific OS.
If the “cowboy builder” comment seems harsh, then consider – we wouldn’t let amateurs, however well meaning and enthusiastic, build bridges or houses. Even moderately complex IT systems are up there with some of the most complex engineering ever attempted by human beings – why should they be different ?
12:18 pm 21st March, 2011
@Tony – some very fair points you make.
Yes, learning a discipline can be boring, but my point was that it would have been *very* easy for them to make it more interesting. An extremely basic example, instead of a square on a squiggly line to represent an undamped spring, it could have easily been a suspension and a tyre. Simple, but a little bit more engaging, especially when you’re dealing with hundreds of these (seemingly trivial, but highly important) examples per week. (Of course, there were various other reasons why it was a horrific thing, mainly due to what was the university stretching the truth of the course content in their descriptions).
Modern developers need to enjoy what they’re doing, and need job satisfaction like anyone else. If they’re using a sub-optimal language because that’s “what’s done”, then it will lead to frustration, as much as I need money, it’s not just about the cashflow, especially for something which obviously requires such dedication to master. We’re talking about getting kids engaged with the subject enough that they feel compelled to take it over easier subject choices. I’m sorry, but I don’t think teaching dry concepts in non-shiny languages is going to do that. Some modern things like Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Objective-C etc. might seem like fads, and most probably are, but these are the tools which kids can get excited about. We need these as inspirations to grab the mindshare for teenagers from other, seemingly more interesting, pursuits.
We’re talking about GCSE level here. The parallel isn’t “Cowboy Builders” it should be “Dodgy DIY”. I’m not talking about all the education the future’s IT managers should have is building their own personal projects, but building and playing and experimenting with your own things is a *fantastic* way to learn, and shouldn’t be underestimated.
I wasn’t aware of a major difference between “skilled” and “trained” – is it that the former is good at the vocation whereas the latter is just good at “the job”? Thanks for pointing it out if there is.
5:32 pm 21st March, 2011
Hi Steve,
I seem to remember a quote from the Jesuits along the lines of, “Give me the child at seven and I will show you the man”. Good habits start young. If we rush off into teaching kids whatever the current fads are, they’ll be stuck with habits and idioms of those fads until someone else (maybe a university department, maybe the school of hard knocks) does something about it – kind of like a mini Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for programming. The problems come when the self- or improperly- taught come across a programming (or thinking) style which is alien to what they already know – for example, a self-taught Java hacker encountering SQL (with all its own difficulties and errors), Haskell, Prolog or some other declarative rather than imperative method. Chaos, frustration and unhappiness, not to mention buggy rubbish software, ensue. All of it avoidable by starting off with teaching the fundamentals rather than specifics.
It might be possible to develop some kind of progression over a number of years from primary school to late secondary school from arithmetic to sets to spreadsheets to programming (never underestimate the value of sets !) that gradually builds up an understanding of the fundamental ideas of data and logic. Maybe they’re trying to do that now, but it doesn’t sound like it.
12:46 am 21st March, 2011
@Tony and @Steve
You are defending your own viewpoints as if the other was coming from an idealogical opposite point of view: from general fundamentals to specifics, from proper progression of ideas to ‘skip to the interesting parts’.
I think that we can all agree that without making the fundamentals of computer theory interesting, we face a greater struggle to affect any change. If we skip the basic ideas of how computers function and only teach how to make apps for iphones, we have failed also.
Yes, there is a logical progression of ideas – functional, procedural, variables and so on – but the specifics cannot be avoided. Languages go into vogue quickly and often leave it just as fast, and how languages incorporate and provide these basic computational ideas varies wildly but without teaching at least one languages specifics, you risk leaving a student missing the link between theory and how it can be implemented.
What I am summarising is simply that one should not be taught without an eye on the other. Teaching the idea of procedural loops but with an idea on an application of that knowledge. Even something as rudimentary of drawing ASCII boxes can be a useful learning tool for this.
One of the publications that still stands out in my mind as treading this path very well is the INPUT magazine series from 1987. It taught basics of how computers worked, but included specific (and often fun) aims for each. The high quality of the graphics and presentation added greatly to its impact too. I have digitised the first issue of the 52 issue series here so you can see for your self: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_on_the_move/sets/72157625280833378/
From above:
“I’m firmly in the “go out there and build shit” camp.”
Then get out of it. Either that, or hope there’s never an IT version of those cowboy builder programs. – by @Steve with reply by @Tony above
I really think there is a miscommunication here. Steve is talking about “learning by doing” in my opinion, which when mentored properly, provides a solid and rewarding method for guiding their development and nurtures a self-motivated problem-solving mentality. Without guidance, bad habits can set in or be blindly adopted.
It is important to note that for many students, learning by doing is their natural and desired route to taking on new information. We have to be there to provide guidance to discourage bad habits or fad thinking.
Which brings me to:
“If we rush off into teaching kids whatever the current fads are, they’ll be stuck with habits and idioms of those fads until someone else (maybe a university department, maybe the school of hard knocks) does something about it” – by @Tony above
I agree with regards to bad habits but disagree strongly with the generalisation of ‘fad’. We need to make sure that they know how to learn about the fads as there is no telling which fad will become the new RDB. They need to both know the necessity of knowing about the new technologies, ways to assess them critically and also how to learn to use them and most importantly, when not to use them.
I have interviewed enough people for software developing roles to observe some trends. There were too many university graduates unable to supply new ways to solve new problems, who would have to be taught how to use code repositories, compilers and build environments (I know!), and even the concept of an issue or task tracker. There were many self-taught candidates who have wildly varying abilities and skills, but generally know the practicalities of working with others, but often have a drive to learn new concepts and systems (sometimes to the detriment of learning or building something staid and mundane.)
It has been far less frustrating to work with the latter rather than the former, at least, in my experience.
9:32 pm 21st March, 2011
Hi Ben
I can see why it would appear as two ideological positions. From my own point of view, I suspect it might actually be turning into one !
I have a gradually growing conviction that we are achieving great things *despite* the tools available rather than *because* of them. And I think that the only way to break the cycle of additional complexity providing an illusion of progress is to get in early and teach the basic maths and logic behind computing (without necessarily even pushing it as IT) and build on those gradually (with reference to specifics as and where appropriate). That way, by the time someone gets to GCSE or A-level, there is time and space to do the fun stuff, and that fun stuff should be based on solid foundations. (Imagine, for example, teaching kids about arithmetic, then introducing them to a calculator on a computer called “Haskell”, then as they learn more logic or maths concepts, they get to play with them on the calculator until suddenly… programming by the back door !)
It’s good to see this being debated and talked around – it shows that people really do care about this and take it seriously.
4:19 pm 21st March, 2011
@tony – I think for ICT to be embedded into the curriculum in the same way that mathematics is, there would need to be an acknowledgement from somewhere that like arithmetic, a skill used in every day life, so are some of the skills in ICT.
I have friends whose children have email accounts at 8. What point then, teaching secure passwords at 14. The horse has bolted and the account has been hacked. The friend I have in mind has set up a failsafe system on the email account so a parent and grandparent also have access to the account to ensure nothing untoward happens on the account. Discussions have been had around giving out the email address and when it is and is not appropriate to do so, along with password security.
At 8.
That Facebook requires someone to be 13 to access it is a fallacy. We all know that the access age is younger. We can’t educate all the parents about the pitfalls, so we acknowledge that we must do better in educating our children. Embedding ICT in early years not only establishes the key skills early, it also, in a sense, gets the boring stuff out of the way first, the fundamentals, before the really fun stuff can be taught in the appropriate streams on arrival at Secondary level.
Or perhaps, I am being simplistic…
10:15 pm 21st March, 2011
As a primary teacher specialising in ICT it is a frustrating world. I know plenty of teachers who, like me, work hard to embed ICT skills across the curriculum for children from the second they enter the school aged 3. We work tirelessly to create exciting, innovative lessons where we can build on the skills children are naturally picking up, teach them about password safety (from the age of 5) and how to interact with technology and how to interact using technology – film making, podcasting, blogging and so on. We teach coding at primary level and we give children the confidence to try out anything we have not taught and know we are there to help with any projects we can and will Google anything we cannot help with or find a teacher who can help through our Twitter networks!
We are not yet the majority (yet) but we are out there trying to change things for the future generations!
However, I speak to secondary teachers and they tell me that they are forced to teach Powerpoint for an entire year (A WHOLE YEAR!) to Year 7 pupils as it says so in the book.
The children leaving my care in Year 6 have covered every necessary skill in Powerpoint before moving on so they will become disengaged very quickly!
Again it is not all and I am aware of excellent practice in secondary schools too.
But for me the dilemma is this:
Not every child is enthralled by ICT in the way we think they are – they use what they have to and need to know how to do that well and safely and competently to do well – and throw some exciting projects for enthusiasm too!
The ones who are enthralled will find a way with or without us – but with us it will happen quicker and have more impact and we won’t risk losing some along the way.
ICT already is an embedded skill into every child’s life – even if it’s just using the DVD player and TV – so it needs to be embedded in school too throughout very subject. They need to be able to pick and choose the hardware and software suitable for task and be aware of why they made those choices.
This should built in across the board. It’s a long road – many teachers need a lot of input in their own development to enable this.
So I think ICT should not be the subject. It should be as essential a part of each subject as paper, pens and excellent teaching.
But Computer Science/Digital Literacy/whatever you want to call it needs to be a fantastic, innovative replacement in the curriculum as a choice. So not everyone needs to code. If you make the lessons exciting they will WANT to choose it. But not everyone needs to code. They need to work with websites from maybe a CSS side but not to build them from scratch. Every child needs a good solid grounding in all aspects of ICT as covered in the current curriculum plus more and up-to-date stuff – this should be embedded.
Build a website because you are enabling a community to discuss issues around the world in your geography lesson – not because you are building a web page because it says so in the ICT curriculum.
In the discrete subject teach the advanced coding and so on that will create the designers and developers of the future. If this choice becomes from GCSE onwards having taught the necessary basics by the age of 14 then it will come in line with what GCSE choices were originally meant for, I think, – to be part of your future career plans. If ICT GCSEs are just teaching what every child should now be able to do by the age of 14 anyway (or will be doing at home anyway) then it is not a great choice of GCSE is it?
It is being done well in places. The government needs to seek out those places and use them to help.
There is one great thing to be said about every ICT savvy person – we share and collaborate freely and happily!
11:26 pm 21st March, 2011
Hi Jodie
“Build a website because you are enabling a community to discuss issues around the world in your geography lesson – not because you are building a web page because it says so in the ICT curriculum.”
This is a really really good point. Tech is embedded everywhere in our daily lives, from pin no’s & cash machines to applying for a job. I’ve got friends telling me their 5 yr old doesn’t understand why tapping the TV screen doesn’t make stuff happen. But even in this there are questions. A digital divide emerges where kids who have been exposed to the tech at home are ‘natives’ and those who haven’t been aren’t and if that disparity is not addressed adequately by schools as you are doing, out the other end comes disadvantaged people in the same way a lack of literacy or numeracy used to be.
It has to be as natural as reading. And as embedded. You’re right.
12:33 am 21st March, 2011
I completed my IT GCSE in 3 days. All I basically had to do was make a table in word and link a few excel cells together. It was far too easy.
After leaving school I taught myself (using everyone’s friend Google) small amounts of HTML, worked out how to operate windows 7 and the basic components to a computer. None of these were offered to me in school. I would have loved it to be. Reading the comments on here there is a lot of talk about code being taught. I believe an understanding of what code does should be taught, but not necessarily the fine detail. I wonder how many students know how software is made.
English, Maths and Science is compulsory at GCSE, surely IT should be as well. After all, the world depends on it more every day and key businesses or operations cannot run without it.
I am cub leader and have taught my cubs(ages 8-10) how to turn on a laptop, connect it to a printer and print off a poster they have made in word. If these basics could be taught at a younger age, when children get to secondary school they can choose specific areas in IT which they’d like to study or if there not interested, they can develop basic IT skills which would help them in life or in the workplace.
I know my argument is a bit all over the place but it’s time IT was recognised as the new English or Maths.
10:32 am 21st March, 2011
I am a primary school teacher with responsibility for ICT and we expect our children to come out at Year 6 with proficiency in basic IT – turning on/off and finding their way around a desktop, laptop, whatever version of Windows may be running; saving and finding their work on a large network; using a word processor, setting up a spreadsheet; manipulating images using something like Dazzle; using digital cameras, videos, microphones and other handheld devices; understanding and entering basic data with interpretation of it using graphs and searches; creating multimedia presentations using Powerpoint, Photostory, Prezi, etc; searching the internet via a safe Learning Platform in the lower years, and learning how to use Google properly as they get older; creating their own flash games with the wonderful 2DoItYourself software and simple coding with Scratch; communicating and forming their own opinions via forums and blogs on our Learning Platform; uploading their work to the Learning Platform with the understanding that audience is all….
I could go on. The thing that disappoints me is that I know that many of our children will be let down at their secondary schools where IT is taught out of any meaningful context and the assumption is that the children know nothing. No wonder so many of them decide it’s boring.
4:13 pm 21st March, 2011
As a teacher in a high-performing selective school the question of ‘programming’ is raised a lot. I agree with a lot of the comments in the press recently and raised by many people (including this article). I feel that I could certainly incorporate more computer science in the curriculum and make it more rigorous for students who already show aptitude in this area.
I currently deliver the Edexcel GCSE ICT and it annoys me slightly when people dismiss it so readily. It is very engaging and relevant ICT qualification for young people and an excellent ‘general purpose’ ICT course for those who are not pursuing a career in ICT. I agree that it is not suitable for those who require more computer science knowledge (there is a GCSE in Computing which meets the needs of these students well). Many of my students want to study medicine at university and are not interested in programming as they will be users of ICT rather than developers. Courses that give basic knowledge about choosing the appropriate hardware and software, designing documents which are fit for purpose and designing a basic website are perfect for them.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I disagree with the fact that we need more computing in schools. However, I don’t think we should cast away qualifications which meet the needs of the majority of students and we should give the young people in our care the option of choosing the course which best meets their needs. In the same way Science has BTEC Applied Science and Triple Science GCSE, schools should give students different levels of ICT/Computing education.