Really basic computer skills not taught at school.. why?

[Nationalcurricumum]

Hi all
First post
18 years+ a secondary music teacher and long-time Mumsnet silent browser. have signed up today because the old TES website has (stupidly) barred teachers from discussing things Doh!..... Anyhoo...... I have spoken to our schools IT teachers and it appears that REALLY basic everyday computer keyboard shortcuts which will save people hours and hours by improving workflow etc.... Simple ones like copy + paste, (CTL C CTL V), (which certain lazy students will use extensively at Uni... ie. while plagiarising vast tracts of others work!😅); save (CTL S) are unbelievably NOT taught in the National curriculum from KS2.
All children need to know some of these they are a universal skill. Our IT teachers say there is not enough time in their curriculum to learn these (actually USEFUL for once!) skills while they teach coding and other programming skills (Cart before the horse IMO) I am hitting a defensive brick wall fighting for my school to teach these basics as I care about my kids and their actual life-skills not just regurgitation of knowledge.
This term I have again had to teach my year 9s ! (ie. 13 year olds who are a whizz on a smartphone) (during a music lesson !!) how to press CTL S, etc etc... rather than spending a minute scrolling menus with a mouse. or touchpad (As a music teacher I am not a fan of the narrow Govian EBacc curriculum but wont go into that here). So, any parents, I.T. English, functional skills educators etc etc out there have an opinion on this IMO gaping hole in school education which will improve childrens use of computers immeasurably that can actually be used in real life and life-long? Anyone have thoughts or an explanation for this?

I was taught basic budgeting and basic percentages in Maths.

Unfortunately people are so switched off from subjects like Maths they don't remember they were taught this stuff.

A friend had to do her GCSE as an adult and didn't realise she understood it because lots of stuff she did and had done in real life until us around her have her examples.

@Reugny I have no use of word processors. Out of excel, word and PowerPoint, PowerPoint is the one I used most often. And that’s probably 2-3 times a year.

Word is terrible for sharing and collaborating with. Don’t start me on sharepoint. Not everyone who works in an office use word. This is not to say we don’t write. We write in wikis, and before that in academia, I used LaTeX.

My point is you will find someone who don’t use these office software. They aren’t hard to use at all. I find I’m better than using them than most people I have seen just because I am good at googling.

I don’t think the OP is right. These basic computer skills are picked up as part of doing homework. Obviously this is going to widen the gap of those who have and who haven’t got computer access at home. DC started using word and PowerPoint for assignments from around year 5. They started having to do English homework then and we let her used a computer for it instead of pen and paper. She learned typing with dance mat typing on BBC bite size. By year 7 she is confident to hand in all her home work using Office 360. DC2 has started with dance mat typing but her accuracy isn’t there yet.

This.
The curriculum is so outdated.
The Tories who rewrote it in 2014 just want all children to have a classical Etonian education like the one they had 🙄
Poor kids today have to learn so much irrelevant shite and miss out on actual useful life skills.
I’m thinking of you fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases, subjunctive tense, algebra, Pythagoras, Chaucer (sorry dude) as well as the examples the PP gave. I could go on all night.

I am always impressed by my GP touch-typing, while he listens to me. My previous one was a two finger pecker (only one S in corpuscle, Dr J), like most of us. But I would say it's an essential skill these days.

I don’t think the OP is right. These basic computer skills are picked up as part of doing homework. Obviously this is going to widen the gap of those who have and who haven’t got computer access at home. DC started using word and PowerPoint for assignments from around year 5. They started having to do English homework then and we let her used a computer for it instead of pen and paper. She learned typing with dance mat typing on BBC bite size. By year 7 she is confident to hand in all her home work using Office 360. DC2 has started with dance mat typing but her accuracy isn’t there yet.

@ReadyForPumpkins can you imagine for a few minutes how life is for the large number of children who don't have a keyboard at home to do online typing or homework?

I can imagine if they don’t have a computer at home to do homework in, then typing becomes as irrelevant to them as trigonometry. Experience with DC1 was she didn’t get good at typing until she does her homework on the computer. It is the act of using Microsoft office for homework that teaches the basic office software computer skills. Not the ICT lessons at school.

Kids only use their phones in normal daily life.

Similarly, the maths skills needed for budgeting and personal finance is taught in primary schools. But good luck trying to teach primary kids maths using personal budgets and interest rates as examples. None of that is relevant to kids until they earn their wages and leave home.

I can imagine if they don’t have a computer at home to do homework in, then typing becomes as irrelevant to them as trigonometry

@ReadyForPumpkins isn't this the point of the thread? Yes, typing may seem irrelevant to these children but, if that isn't addressed at school, where will it be addressed? Typing is a basic life skill required for a much wider range of jobs than trigonometry.

Many schools loaned laptops to families during lockdown but, if parents don't know how to use them, the children don't stand much chance of fairing any better. My son's ICT skills improved during lockdown, but only because I was on hand to answer his questions and show him how to trouble-shoot issues.

This

@nibblez my point is that kids don’t see it as relevant so they won’t pay attention anyway. Lots of the stuff people say we need to teach kids about budgeting and personal finance are taught at schools. But no one pays attention and they complain they aren’t taught.

We haven’t been taught touch typing for years now. I thought that’s more the generation who are now in their 80s? Or was it taught only if you train to be a secretary? I am 40s and I learned to type at a summer course my parents signed me up for.

exactly, none of those shortcuts you mention work on my school computer or my home laptop, and the shortcuts I do use will not be valid for others. Children learn to use the operating system they have available to them, and a short time later they learn the next system they have available, and so on. It isn't the place of schools to teach every possible variant, and would be of no benefit to anyone if they did.

Thats like saying a school should teach children how to programme my washing machine, never mind they will all have different washing machines at home, or hand wash or use a laundrette, and when they move or get a new washing machine nothing they new about the last one matters any more anyway

I’m in my 70s and touch typing wasn’t taught in school to my generation or previous ones (it may have been to some girls in some schools, but not generally, and never to boys). You went to secretarial college to learn to type.

my point is that kids don’t see it as relevant so they won’t pay attention anyway

@ReadyForPumpkins , isn't it the job of a teacher to turn this around? If not, we may as well just give up on a large proportion of children and not bother educating them at all. School exists because parents often don't have the skills to teach their own children or the money to pay others to do it. Obviously if all families were like yours and mine, the teaching of keyboard skills wouldn't be necessary, but they're not.

Perhaps part of the problem is employers wanting schools to teach everything, instead of accepting that they need to train new staff in the basics.

If your new employee had gone into one of the many hundreds of jobs that don't require the typing of letters or documents, she may have gone her whole life not needing to know how to make text bold. So learning it in school would have been even less useful than quadratic equations or Shakespeare.

If your employees need to know how to make text bold, it is your job to show them. Schools can't do it all.

Because our wonderful government told us not to teach ICT and to solely teaching computer science

So basic skills are ignored butbwe can make frogs jump over a screen beautifully

Did you mean to be so rude and accusing?

Where did I say it was a problem or an expectation?

Did I say training was a problem?

I was sharing an example from my own experiences to explain how the basic IT skills students begin working life with have evolved over the years.

No negative or accusing tone, just me contributing to this forum.

Some of these replies show just how needed some of this education is! The fact someone said these shortcuts don't work on Microsoft is just bonkers.
No a mouse cannot do a lot of these things a lot of the time. I've found myself needing to select all text or bold words in the most random places often without a mouse option to do so. Never mind how many times undo has saved me somewhere without an actual button.
Screenshot shortcuts and partial ones are also used on a regular basis.

It's like when you watch someone type a username then go to the mouse and click the password box and click the login button without just pressing tab and enter. Tab and shift tab are two functions that seemingly could save a lot of people an awful lot of time!
Imagine how much more productive people could be at work if they knew how to use computers efficiently.

Could you not just share a sheet of them each year for your students to stick on the cover of their planner/timetable. Explain they will be helpful for life.

I know it's not music but it is useful in all lessons.

Or hand it out via the tutor group network and do it as part of registration. Learning does not need to be siloed it can be holistic.

I strongly disagree. I've managed my own departments and run my own business, so am responsible for hiring and training staff. I will happily provide training and finance courses/qualifications for staff to learn tax and accounting (several years and thousands of pounds per employee) and we provide a course for all staff in Excel advanced data analytics. But there's no way I'm providing remedial training in the basics that should have been taught in schools, like literacy, numeracy and the most basic of computer skills. We won't even interview any applicants without good word/excel skills whether from prior employment or from courses etc (or other "proof" they know it which may well be from a hobby or just self taught) - it's a key criteria in our job adverts!

We want evidence of ability in numeracy, literacy and basic computer skills as the "gateway" to us providing them with expensive training in our core business requirements. We're not going to waste time and resources trying to teach someone the basics only to find they can't do it and won't be able to progress to professional training/work that's the whole point of the job!

Whilst I agree in principle, and yes, the "tab" button is often useful, not all programs work like that. Sometimes, pressing tab after your email/user name doesn't take you to the password box. Obviously, it's always worth trying to see if it does, though!

It's a great shame that there's no real standardisation in the writing of programs and apps. For those of us who use lots of different programs on a daily basis, it's quite annoying to see that very simple but effective shortcuts are not universal across different programs.

One of the most commonly used programs in our firm is actually a very old dos based program (now adapted and re-written to work under Windows, but it's still written as if it were dos with the same functionality it had as a dos program), where there are lots of "key-stroke" shortcuts that don't need a mouse (though you can use the mouse for all of them as well). We use it because it's exceptionally quick for data entry as you can keep your fingers on the keyboard rather than constantly moving your hand to the mouse! When I say quick, I'm talking about 5,10,15 times faster for data entry than using a mouse or touchscreen! When we have to use modern programs that do the same (i.e. where the client has chosen their own modern software which we have to work with), it's painfully slow to have to use the mouse or touchscreen and we really miss all the keystroke shortcuts.

Not talking about specific keystrokes for the particular program. I'm taking very generic stuff, like using the + or - key to move a date forward or back by a day, or entering a date from the keypad as 161023 whereas the modern program requires you to select the date from a calendar (or those awful scrolling lists on apps).

I do wonder if shortcuts were more universal and common, whether they'd be more likely to be taught in schools. As usual, though, schools aren't consistent in how they teach, so won't all be using the same software. They should, but they're not!

The reason tab doesn't work the way you think is that the order is controlled by the tab index. The link below is for web applications, but desktop apps have the same concept.

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_global_tabindex.asp

An example about those who think they are very computer literate here but aren't in reality. It's probably one of those UX things that got dropped to ship software out the door.

I'm not a hiring manager but I have helped with interviews to those applying to my department. I can say we never ask for word/excel skills. It is not universally needed. I'm not sure why people here are thinking it's a universal skill that's needed by everyone. What if you want to be a bricklayer, a truck driver, or a medical doctor.

Keyboard shortcuts are the same. They are defined in the software and are not universal. Apple and microsoft has different shortcuts. So are microsoft office and google docs. I find just switching my software package means I need to learn a different set of shortcuts. In fact the most common one I use is not copy and paste but cltr-space to autocomplete. We really don't need to be taught to use specific software packages. The concept this belongs in a school is insane.

@ReadyForPumpkins

I'm not a hiring manager but I have helped with interviews to those applying to my department. I can say we never ask for word/excel skills. It is not universally needed. I'm not sure why people here are thinking it's a universal skill that's needed by everyone. What if you want to be a bricklayer, a truck driver, or a medical doctor.

You can say the same about most things taught in schools. How many bricklayers or truck drivers, shop workers, barristas, etc., need to do the periodic table, or pythagoras, or solving simultaneous equations? All of which could easily be learned online for the tiny proportion of adults who actually need those skills in their jobs!!

Just who decided what is taught in schools and why? It seems an accident of history that we're still basically teaching the same stuff we did a few decades ago, almost without any acknowledgement that the world has moved on, especially the world of employment! Same with life skills. A few decades ago, personal finance was easy, people got paid in cash, they paid for their shopping in case, paid a guy on a bike calling house to house weekly for insurance, put coins in a meter for electricity, etc. Now it's all comparison sites, debt/loans, HP/lease contracts, etc - a huge proportion of people just don't have the skills to understand all that and school does bugger all to teach them about it, hence all the scams, financial mistakes, debt, etc.

Tab and shift don't always work on all websites.

In addition some of us use multiple operating systems and different programs to do the same thing in.

When one of my nephews', now in his mid-20s, was at school he did ICT. He absolutely hated it because it was teaching him to use Microsoft Office on Windows. The computers he had access to at home didn't have Windows on them.