DS is coming to the end of Year 8. It's a great school, but it's small and doesn't currently have a computer science teacher (or an IT teacher for that matter).
I've got a computing background so have been helping to run a small code club along with one or two other parent volunteers.
Taking into account all of the recent controversies over Computer Science and IT teaching, and the shortage of computing staff (the school has tried and failed to recruit on more than one occasion), and the fact that even if they do recruit, numbers for CS GCSE may be fairly low, and the staff member might be more usefully employed teaching general IT skills, I was thinking about contingency options - either home schooling or tutoring for CS GCSE. It's possible that a small group of students might be interested in going down the same path.
The school has supported parents who have wanted their DCs to do early language GCSEs because they speak a second language at home, so I think they would be supportive of the idea. However, I'm not a teacher, and so without further research I don't know how "hard" or how "full" the GCSE curriculum is. If the most difficult bit about it is the coding then my DS, and the other students I'm thinking about, won't have a problem with that.
Has anyone gone down a similar path? Any CS teachers out there who can comment on the "teachability" of the GCSE curriculum to relatively bright already-tech-savvy kids?