Do school leavers know about databases? (sorry interview prep)

[SarfE4sticated]

Hi there, I have a tutoring job that I'm going for, and need some info for my interview. Would most secondary school leavers know what a database is? Is it on the national curriculum? Could I confidently assume that a group of London 19 year olds would have learned about them in IT lessons at school?

[titchy]

Not sure you can tbh. Mine are similar ages and only know the basics - and that's largely due to me!

[TeenTimesTwo]

DD did GCSEs 4 years ago and as part of the ECDL had to learn the basics about databases.
Your 19yos will be a year behind her.
I don't think you can 'confidently assume' but you'd be in with a good chance.

[LIZS]

Depends what package you are assuming they are familiar with and what to do with it. Basic ones in excel maybe Access probably not. Mail merge, sorting/highlighting etc possibly.

[LolaSmiles]

I'm not sure you can.
I studied Access databases in IT at GCSE but that was a while ago when using Microsoft Office was the GCSE coursework.
To my knowledge it's not taught now. IT is heading much more down the route of computing and coding

[stucknoue]

Depends if they did it at school, mine did (secondary)

[SarfE4sticated]

Thanks everyone. It's more whether they will know what 'a' database is and what a database can do, rather than whether they can use Access or specific software. I only have 15mins, so need to know what level of knowledge I can assume.

My primary school DD can do coding and HTML editing, but I'm not sure what they cover at secondary.

Thanks everyone - much appreciated

[noblegiraffe]

Our Y12s going into Y13 couldn’t even do the most basic stuff in Excel when we were teaching them the Large Dataset in A-level maths, so I wouldn’t assume anything!

[sd249]

"Our Y12s going into Y13 couldn’t even do the most basic stuff in Excel when we were teaching them the Large Dataset in A-level maths, so I wouldn’t assume anything!"


Literally could have written this myself. Most schools kind of head towards coding rather than IT now. I would say unlikely. Best thing to do is to plan two things. Start with finding out what they know and then decide what you are going to do after finding that out!

[SarfE4sticated]

Luckily it's an sample 15 minute presentation at an interview with managers of the company, so no actually 19 year olds will be affected.
I just need to make a call on how basic to pitch it. I will do a really quick round up of databases I think, that way it's good revision and will make sure they have the basics.
If it was a real session then I would have to do that sd249
Thanks

[LIZS]

If it is a microteach, it is worth recapping anything you are expecting knowledge of , even if there would be an entry requirement, then do a summary to close to check what has been learnt.

[CasparBloomberg]

I’m surprised by the responses here; both of mine covered/are covering very basic spreadsheet/data/graphing functions and simple databases (in Excel not Access) at their state primary school

[SarfE4sticated]

Yes LIZS I will do that, even if they have covered it before, you don't know quite what they've retained or whether they've understood it completely.

[Noodledoodledoo]

Having taught GCSE Statistics which relied upon a lot of calculations being perfomed in Excel and following conversations with IT teachers, unless they are doing IT then very little. I spent a lot of my time teaching them what I consider basics in excel to year 10's. They had been taught it in yr 7 but having not used it at all they forget it all. So many insisted on trying to enter data and draw graphs by going in via Word!!

[Kazzyhoward]

My son has had zero IT/computer teaching at neither primary nor secondary. It's an absolute disgrace when IT is so important in the modern world. Everything he knows has been self taught. Both schools had lots of computers, but at primary, it seemed to be all about playing games on them and at secondary it's about googling for homework research. What is crazy is that they're expected to write essays on Word and presentations on Power point in various subjects, but they've never been taught how to use either package. As for databases, no, my son wouldn't have a clue about them.