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.

I agree 100% with Kez and Giraffe - any programming learned at school is likely to be out of date by the time they're looking for a job (if not out of date already when they're learning it), and those who are interested/motivated can undoubtedly find plenty of resources online to play with in their own time.

Even when I was at school in the dark ages (well, O levels rather than GCSEs) the recommendation was to avoid Computer studies for exactly this reason.

Fortunately today's students are less likely to have to put their computer in the fridge before it will work (the joy of the oh-so-reliable ZX81 ) or to need to try to save their programmes onto scratchy cassette tape previously used to record Duran Duran off Radio 1!!!

If programming is taught in schools (and it isn't very often - there is some in AS computing and I think there will be some in the new Computing GCSEs as well) it is usually a rather dated language (like Pascal) that is taught, but to be fair, once a child has mastered the basics in one language it's not too difficult to learn another more useful one, so I think the main problem is that very few children learn programming at school rather than that what they learn is out of date.

As a country we do lag behind others in school age programming skills. There is an Informatics Olympiad for school age children which is essentially a programming algorithm competition. Only 750 children entered this years contest, the top 4 will go on to the International Olympiad in Informatics, but usually the UK does not fare all that well against other countries in the international round (with occasional exceptions).

giraffe, kez and takver- so this is a complete waste of time?

Seriously, do you think so?

Litten
Logo that is mentioned in that article was EXCELLENT - I remember seeing it.
What has gone WRONG is that employers have said "we want ready made office proles" so "ICT" turned into "Microsoft Office"
Its a bit like my bugbear (much vented on these forums) about over narrowing at O and A level into -ology subjects.
The programming skills that need to be taught are those that teach children how to think in a logical manner - you tell it to turn right it turns right
so a course based on Logo and MIT's scratch would never be "out of date" because it is sideways of the commercial stuff but will give kids the skills to pick up the commercial stuff double quick.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
scratch.mit.edu/

Teaching them some sort of formal programming language would probably be dull and pointlessly out of date in terms of the job market. A GCSE in C++ will get them nowhere.

Getting them to muck about with code, like a modern equivalent of logo, to get the idea of following sequences of instructions is fine. Even Excel can be used to teach important expressions like 'If....Then....', also PowerPoint when sequencing actions within slides.
The kids who are really into computers will probably be way ahead of the class and instruction material from day one. I taught a fifteen year old who already ran his own web design company, and another who was quite proficient at hacking.

It's obvious that the ICT curriculum needs constant updating because what can be achieved with computers is always changing. Gove has already announced schools can now do their own thing, so schools will obviously be looking into the various options already.

Agree with TalkinPeace - nothing wrong at all with teaching the basic skills.

I guess my feeling is, if there is a teacher with an interest / the skills who can teach along the lines suggested by TiP & noblegiraffe (and its the sort of thing that often seems to get picked up in a lunchtime club), then great.

But given limited curriculum time (and teacher funding), I'm not 100% sure it is the best use of resources to insist on it, IYSWIM.

I spoke to my son about this last night. He is adamant that Maths and Physics should be the subjects taught at GCSE level. In fact, he would prefer to see a change where they don't have to do all three sciences as he, for example, has no interest whatsoever in Biology, but has to do it either stand alone (to access triple science) or as part of a mixed paper (in double).

He says he is perfectly happy to do any programming on offer at school and he would find it fun but, really, that's not the point. Once he gets on in life, programming is what he will be taught, but Maths and Physics is what those employers or lecturers will expect him to actually know and, if he doesn't, will he even get opportunity, losing out to those with great academic skills.

I think they should make Computing/coding a mandatory subject at school. When I hear people say this could turn them off, or 'the best people I know taught themselves.' It is so annoying - course they are there was no-one to teach them! OR in the case of some of the people I know, they brothers or dads have taught them. And I am sure there are loads of kids turned off from English, maths and 3 sciences which are all mandatory. Yes I get that finding people to teach coding it tricky - I have a computing degree and I don't think I would be good enough. We need to somehow get people in the industry to come and do some time in schools. And it is not just a question of money. None of the private schools I have gone to see do it either - they don't have a clue about how important this is for our children's and this country's future. When I was at school, computing was done by a group of nerds one lunch time a week. I just assumed that it was a subject by now! (By the way I did not join that group)

I would say you're too late for next academic year. Timetables in most secondary schools will already have been blocked to the extent than a new subject won't fit.