Anyone requested that their (state) secondary start offering a GCSE?

[LittenTree]

How do I go about it? Letter to the Head? Backed up with what?

I am thinking about "Computer Science" as opposed to IT.

This shouldn't be beyond them as they produce the best academic results in the county, inc Eng Bacc. (i.e not NVQ stylee 'equivalents'), my point being they shouldn't shy away due to complexity!

I know there has been discussion about this inc by the government. I am absolutely No Fan of this coalition BUT there is no doubt about it, somehow standards had to be recalibrated and 'proper' rigour introduced back into the curriculum.

Well, this is one way of doing it!

Our DCs need to know not just how to find their way around a computer, they need to know how they actually work and how to make them work.

Oooh then they can spend their times making apps and selling them, instead of just using them, sounds good. Maybe just email the Head of Dept and say you read about it and will the school consider offering it? They may well already be thinking about it.

the problem with computing is there are not a lot if ICT teachers capable of teaching it!

There are many ICT specialists who are specialists in using software etc and have no grounding in computing. There are others (myself included) that have been out of programming/coding/actual computing for so long due to the horrible, boring and stupid schemes of work we have been forced to teach that we would need to 're-train ourselves' before we could teach the subject!

Plus, there are other ICT teachers who have no actual qualifications in the subject, but they think they can use a computer so have been placed into the subject due to shortages etc and have stayed there.....but that's a different story!

the problem with computing is there are not a lot if ICT teachers capable of teaching it!

There are many ICT specialists who are specialists in using software etc and have no grounding in computing. There are others (myself included) that have been out of programming/coding/actual computing for so long due to the horrible, boring and stupid schemes of work we have been forced to teach that we would need to 're-train ourselves' before we could teach the subject!

Plus, there are other ICT teachers who have no actual qualifications in the subject, but they think they can use a computer so have been placed into the subject due to shortages etc and have stayed there.....but that's a different story!

Apologies for the double post - phone is playing up!

I don't see why you shouldn't ask - perhaps a letter to your dc's Head of Year explaining that s/he is particularly interested in this subject and would they consider offering it? They can only say no!

I know one local school here offers Astronomy GCSE as an out of school time extra because pupils who'd been part of a lunchtime club wanted to take it.

I was at my Y8 son's parents evening a few weeks ago and talked to his ICT teacher about how he is learningJjavascript and plans to move on to Python soon and she said "Wow, real programming, he'll know more than me". I had to stop my jaw falling and have resolved to take charge of computing education at home.

Good point from cricket balls.

Years ago, my father taught electronics at a technical college. When they started teaching "microprocessors" he had to learn about it for himself. Often he was about half a class ahead of the students!

Interesting responses. I confess to a bit of that an IT teacher couldn't teach Computing. Who knew?

I shall send a note into school over the next few days and see what they say- even if they need to draft in new teachers.

I think computer science should be taught as part of the maths curriculum and that IT should be scrapped altogether.

That seems to be the current government's position, too.

I have no problem with teaching 'the less able' how to use a computer just like back in the '70's secondary modern girls were taught typing, but there needs to be a differentiation between teaching typing and eloquently dictating the letters.

The more able need to learn to code.

I'll try to write with correct English (New phone!)

Just to give you an example of the experience of some ICT teachers....

My actual degree is Business and ICT Education which qualifies my fellow graduates and I to teach ICT which is based using ICT. I however also hold an HNC in Electronics which was heavily based in machine code programming and the basics behind the design of computers - this is very unusual and a different field entirely

I would add as I said previously that as I have not had to use my learning in this field for years, I would have to re-learn what I covered in my qualifications, but also learn the new languages as I have never had to use them prior to even thinking about teaching it

The maths department is too busy teaching maths to teach computer science. Also, we are mathematicians, not programmers.

I'd much prefer that dd was taught maths really well and learnt to code in her own time!

One point - I learnt typing at school in the 1980s, they encouraged everyone to learn to type, regardless of how academic you were.

I'd say that being able to touch type both very fast and accurately has been one of the most useful skills that I learnt at school. Which goes to show how little you can predict the future (I don't suppose my teachers envisaged the fact that it would be useful to be able to take accurate meeting notes directly onto a laptop, for example.)

On the Today programme this morning they had an item about people learning "programming"
but it was only HTML, CSS and Java
whereas to my mind programming is C++ or the good old days of basic

most IT staff cannot programme for toffee
let the kids loose on this : scratch.mit.edu/
EXCELLENT skill building

Draft in new teachers? Is that some kind of nerdy IT joke? Are you going to offer to pay for it? Because school budgets are being slashed, teachers pay is frozen, EMAs are scrapped...

Perhaps you should volunteer to go into teaching, OP, I'm sure 'the less able' would love to have the benefit of your patronising attitude experience.

Odd how computing never took off isn't it? I did computer studies AO level back in 1981 ... taught by a maths teacher whose hubby worked as a programmer! There was one PC in the whole school at that stage ... locked in a room. I didn't know that a GCSE existed, because at the DCs school they offer computing AS as a 2 year course for "selected" pupils.

My son is learning scratch and JavaScript. He keeps sending stuff to school so he is learning it with a teacher of some sort. I had assumed it was IT. He is in year 9. I have no idea how it works or if they are just at 'playing' level. It sounds like a game as he was talking about trying to sort a 'glitch with his character'.

I would ask the school - after all how else will they know - but don't hold out hopes. Budgets are very tight and I would imagine schools are finding it difficult t offer the options that they used to, needing now to fill th classes of the traditional subjects, rather than think about offering extras.

I so rarely say this, balia, but for fuck's sake.

Yes, I'm sure funding (and it would seem 'finding'!) teachers of computing might be tricky same as finding the money to pay PHSE teachers may have been difficult once that subject became compulsory, but I think the government's drift in this is that we have to send our more able DCs out into a world market as prepared as the Indian and Chinese students are. I'm sure the private schools won't be shooting down the concept, they will deliver what 'the market' needs- and their pupils will, once again, clean up.

I also despair of that stupid, state-school English attitude of 'all DC are of equal intelligence and thus must be taught exactly the same curriculum regardless of whether they have the skills to master half of it'.

This is what's lead to dumbing down, inability to stretch the most able and half-arsed third rate provision for the less able- because we refuse to differentiate as that's not fair, innit? The fact you find my remark that 'girls at a secondary modern learned to type' patronising is laughable, it really is. They were being taught skills appropriate to their likely future employment prospects. No one was pretending they'd pass a 'O' level physics, otherwise they'd've been at the grammar school, wouldn't they?

There is absolutely nothing wrong in teaching to children's skills, abilities and intelligence level. Calling that statement 'patronising' is why we have so many DC leave school functionally uneducated (but with bleeding heart 'liberals' happily smiling as that education had all been delivered equally, after all!) , because they were unable to access much of the compulsory curriculum, thus they disengaged.

It's not exactly rocket science.

Littentree, Balia is correct, there is no money in state schools to go out hiring some teachers just to teach computing. This government has slashed school budgets so schools are laying teachers off, not hiring.

Your assumption that schools found money to hire PSHE teachers because it became compulsory shows how out of touch you are with reality. Most schools did not hire PSHE teachers, they simply timetabled current teachers to teach it. All full time teachers in my school have to teach it despite having no training to do so. If you want computing taught what will happen is that some ICT teacher will be told that they need to learn the syllabus because that's what they're teaching now.

Hire a teacher just to teach computing GCSE. What would they do with the rest of their time?

It's not refusal to differentiate or liberalism, it's severe lack of funding and resources.

LittenTree - I agree with all you say re differentiation.

On your original point, T offer something called Systems Control at GCSE. I gather this is about the insides ?????? of a computer as opposed to just the mouse manipulation of IT. Clearly I'm no expert and ds is not very computery, but ds's friend who is a mega-brain is taking Systems Control and I doubt whether he would opt for a wishy-washy subject.

"I also despair of that stupid, state-school English attitude of 'all DC are of equal intelligence and thus must be taught exactly the same curriculum regardless of whether they have the skills to master half of it'."

Which stupid state schools would these be? I doubt whether you would find many state schools which didn't put children in sets, and didn't 'differeniate' within sets.

"The fact you find my remark that 'girls at a secondary modern learned to type' patronising is laughable, it really is. They were being taught skills appropriate to their likely future employment prospects. No one was pretending they'd pass a 'O' level physics, otherwise they'd've been at the grammar school, wouldn't they?"

The eleven plus was notorious for setting a higher pass mark for girls than boys, because girls did better than boys at eleven, consigning a number of able girls to the secondary modern who would easily have got to the grammar school if a boy.

By the same token, a fair number of the pupils in the top sets at a secondary modern would have been perfectly capable of getting an O level in physics if they had been prepared for it. But no, they were educated to know their place, so offered typing for girls, woodwork for boys. You make it sound as though you would be happy with this.

Ofsted would have a field day with any comp that taught all its students the same curriculum. It just doesn't happen. Vocational qualifications, college placements for the less academic and extra GCSEs for the top end are fairly standard.

Q: (noblegiraffe) 'Your assumption that schools found money to hire PSHE teachers because it became compulsory shows how out of touch you are with reality. Most schools did not hire PSHE teachers, they simply timetabled current teachers to teach it'-

-yes but hasn't it become abundantly obvious here that IT teachers feel unqualified to teach Computer Science?? Therefore you can't just shove the PE teacher in to do it! THAT'S why I say you'd need to bring them in!

OK, OK, I stand corrected about my idiotic assumption that a school that contains the '20% pass' to '85% pass' (assuming the 'bottom' 1-19% are in different educational institutes?- though they weren't at my DB's SM in 1971...) can in any way be referred to as containing academically 'less able' DC than the '86% to 100% pass' DCs at the grammar. Sorry.

No, actually, I'm not, because remarks made condemning my temerity to suggest that teaching typing to SM girls as used to happen in 1975 was a useful apportioning of their time when obviously, it seems, they should have been doing 'O' level physics perhaps actually illustrate my view rather well.

Finally, volcan, read what I said which was "stupid, state-school English attitude", not "stupid state school". I thought it was obvious I meant 'a persuasive mind set' as opposed to a named school.....

gramercy thanks re Systems Control! I'd've had no idea that that might be a form of 'Computer Science'!

Couple of final points:
giraffe -Pre the 'Academy' boom, English state school did teach the same curriculum in all state schools. It was called the National Curriculum. And was law.

volcan (Q) 'By the same token, a fair number of the pupils in the top sets at a secondary modern would have been perfectly capable of getting an O level in physics if they had been prepared for it. But no, they were educated to know their place, so offered typing for girls, woodwork for boys. You make it sound as though you would be happy with this.'

Believe me, I would be more than happy if a secondary school teaches or had already taught my DS2, at 14 or 15: basic maths, basic literacy, basic money management, mechanics (BTEC), basic engineering, presentation skills, time management skills, with a shot at a MFL (there's no way he'd ever PASS a GCSE!), a couple of years of Geography, History and so forth (ie plenty of time to unearth hidden talents!) along with PE and so forth- rather than waste his and everyone else's time making him grind through subject at levels which are too hard for him, and maybe see him leaving school with less than he would if his ability and aptitude were better catered for.

There is a model for this already, in the German education system. I am not directly advocating this as I don't like the segregation of DC into different schools as experience has shown that once selected in this way at an inappropriately young age, there is little scope for movement later on- but this doesn't mean that everything must remain available to all forever. It is a pointless waste of resources to suggest so.