As covered on every news site (e.g. BBC) and every blog everywhere… schools in England will be dropping ICT (Information & Communication Technology, or ‘How to use office software and send email’ as it was generally taught) and introducing Computer Science – including programming and software development – in its place. It seems that even Michael Gove can get things right sometimes.
Of course, software development (including game development) is already part of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence – but the greater challenge comes with developing teacher skills and knowledge and getting the technology in place to support the curriculum. According the Ian Livingstone interview on Today, only 3 of 28,000 qualifying teachers in England in 2010 had Computing Science degrees (seems a dubious statistic myself, not sure what the origin of the stat is), so there will be significant need to support and develop teacher expertise. If schools are merely given the option of including programming, then relatively few may benefit from what has been announced as a very major shake-up.
I’ll leave final words to Prof Steve Furber (who as one of the creators of the BBC Computer, was responsible for the introducing many British school children to programming in schools):
“We look forward to hearing more about how the government intends to support non-specialist teachers who make up the majority of the workforce in delivering an excellent ICT education without official guidance on lesson content,”
