Computer Science GCSE

[Teenagetrials]

My daughter is in year 9 and needs to submit her GCSE options this term.

She is deciding between Computer Science and Geography. We are keen for her to do Computer Science as there is a large element of coding involved and we think this would stand her in good stead for the future. She is currently working at a grade 8 level in Maths, and would be expected to get an 8 or 9 at GCSE. She is concerned she might find GCSE Computer Science hard. Our view is that the knowledge Computer Science will give her for the future and a potentially lower grade at GCSE outweighs a potentially higher grade in Geography.

Does anyone have any experience they can share? Thanks

There is now NO NEA (which was coursework/controlled assessment)

This was meant to be a temporary change due to the pandemic. There is nothing to suggest at this stage that the syllabus won't have reverted to normal for OP's DD year.

Agree with op
I am also in it, more girls the better, but to be truthful I am happy for people to have a range of backgrounds and people who have studied more broadly often see coding as a tool to solve a problem, not as a thing of beauty in itself , and so tend to focus on the solution not the pure code

I agree with redsky you need to look at which exam board they are following to see that there is hardly any coding. A lot of children think it is coding and then get bored when they start looking at systems and they then switch subjects.

Both my sons do CS, Ds1 is in year 13 and has offers from top RG unis for CS but they only want maths and further maths, not CS at all. Ds2 is in year 10. They both studying under the OCR exam board.

At the end of the day this is about numbers on a sheet of paper, ie the grades you get for GCSE. So subjects they are good at which hopefully align with subjects they enjoy. It is soul destroying to do a subject when you dislike it. Trust me, both DCs hated English, they are science/maths boys, they hate the wishy washyness of English and I have tried to get them to love it, my own degree is English lit! It will feel like an enormous slog for GCSE.

Let her choose what she wants to do. She can code outside of school work if that is what she loves, Ds1 certainly did which is why he has 4 offers already from universities for it.

I'm a developer, would also love more women in my field (I actually work in a company with more female than male dev, v unusual!) but you've go to actually like doing it or you'll hate it and you'll give up. You have to kinda like relentless problem solving.

Also I had nearly 2 years off where I barely coded (mat leave + Covid) at its really crap trying to get back into it, I have to Google a lot more but I guess the fundamental approach is still in my head though best practices have changed a lot in the last few years sooooo learning to code and then not constantly using it is slightly pointless to me.

I'm in a Facebook group of women who code and there's a lot of women who turn to it because they think they can make lots of money but they aren't inherently interested in it so it's really painful for them.

This was meant to be a temporary change due to the pandemic. There is nothing to suggest at this stage that the syllabus won't have reverted to normal for OP's DD year.

No. Not at all. (I teach the subject and this qualification)

OCR, AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas all changed their syllabus completely (the changes were announced well before Covid.) starting Sept 2020.

The current Year 11s and last year’s year 11s, still had/have to do the programming project (NEA). The current year 11s don’t have to send off their programming projects this year and neither did last year’s year 11s as a Covid response.

Current year 10s and below have a new syllabus that’s is not changed because of Covid. It was changed because of ‘cheating’ in the NEA.

Go have a look at all the exam board’s websites if you don’t believe me.

I'm a developer too who faced the same choice (but at a level, GCSE want offered in those days). For the record I chose geography whilst doing some background reading/coding myself at home before doing a CS degree.
I'd let her choose, she's not closing doors at this point.

DS did GCSE CS recently and we were really disappointed with the course. He was bored out of his mind on the theory portion but loved the coding side. Take a long hard look at the syllabus on offer before you make up your minds. It’s way better than the old ICT rubbish mind.

Look at the teachers and the grades the school attain. It’s really hard for schools to recruit and retain good CS teachers. It’s such a shame but understandable given most could have a much more lucrative career.

Dd did CS. It was really encouraged. She had 3 girls and 17 boys in her class. The male teacher was almost in tears when she said she wasn’t doing it at ALevel. He said the girls had a different way of looking at solutions which would really benefit everyone in the future if more girls got into it. The only thing is if you do computer science at A Level you need to do maths as well because practically all CS degrees need ALevel maths.
Dd got a 9. With everything getting more technical, as an employer I would definitely be happy if I saw computer science on a CV even at GCSE level as it shows they are not afraid of technology and hopefully know their way round a computer (I have had well educated employees that can’t do these things and it hinders everything).