Computer Science added to EBacc

If you’re at BETT this week, come over to Stand B240 to meet one of the Robs, Clive and a bunch of impaled Jelly Babies.

The Department for Education (DfE) has just announced that Computer Science is to be added to the new English Baccalaureate or EBacc. The EBacc is a series of new qualifications to replace the GCSEs that English kids take at 16, designed to be more rigorous than the existing standards.

This is an enormous curricular change for England, which has traditionally recognised only Physics, Biology and Chemistry as core science subjects. Computer Science is now on a level footing with those subjects, carrying the same weight and prestige, and having an equal impact on choices pupils can make later about A Levels and University courses. This is wonderful news.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said today:

It is great news that Google is helping the brilliant Raspberry Pi project. We are replacing the old-fashioned ICT curriculum with a Computer Science curriculum. This will combine with the Raspberry Pi project to spread teaching of computer coding which is so educationally and economically vital.

The new Computer Science curriculum replaces the old ICT curriculum, discontinued last year. The old ICT courses did not prepare students for studying Computer Science at university (or for much else); we’re delighted to see their replacement being treated as a proper, exacting academic subject. There’s a statement from the DfE that you can read in full over at their website; it’s worth a look.

What specifics would you like to see included in a new CompSci curriculum?

58 comments

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What would I like to see? ACTUAL CODING, and that’s not counting “doing some HTML” as coding as previously demonstrated on BBC news.

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What would I like to see? Actual TESTING as well as coding. One thing VERY noticeable about most CompSci industrial placement students and graduates in general is that they have no idea how to formally plan for, test and release their software. Testing is seen as an afterthought, “not their problem” etc (and yes I know there are exceptions: the brilliant Sam Nazarko from Raspbmc certainly understands how to test his output for example).

Generally CompSci graduates have touched on unit testing and not much else which puts them at a considerable disadvantage when faced with a team of dedicated software testers (“Bug report? … um what are steps to reproduce again?”). One notable exception is Reading Uni in the UK: their graduates seem to be considerably further ahead and terms such as reviews, white box, black box, integration, system testing and UAT all seem to be under their belt. Kudos to Reading.

So yes, more coding (and I agree, not just HTML) but let us also ensure students know how to fully design their apps and both plan for and execute effective testing strategies to determine fitness for purpose.
=C

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And documentation (both of code itself and production of user/management/maintenance docs).

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@Nicholas – absolutely agreed.

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In the same vein, using a source control system. Although it’s fairly easily picked up when needed, why not pick it up fairly easily right from the start? It’s a fundamental yet generally isn’t covered even at a university level, to the best of my knowledge.

It would also help to instil an awareness of the value of “backups” and potentially save new learners a lot of heartache due to data loss.

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Agree with all three above – a competent software engineer needs some knowledge of testing, documentation, releases and source control, yet many appear to embark on careers without any of the above. The sort of one-shot projects used to assess most educational work can get away without many or all of them, so we end up with graduates who don’t understand what they are there to achieve.
I learned about all of them via open source projects outside of the formal curriculum – but that isn’t going to come up with the number of skilled workers we need (as my current employer can testify).

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The Raspberry Pi is a catalyst for computer science! Congratulations! I’m hoping that one day will see such positive evolution in the US system as well.

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From Michael Gove’s speech at BETT

Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme will give children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming with their own credit card sized, single-board computers. With minimal memory and no disk drives, the Raspberry Pi computer can operate basic programming languages, handle tasks like spread sheets, word-processing and games, and connect to wifi via a dongle – all for between £16 and £22. This is a great example of the cutting edge of education technology happening right here in the UK. It could bring the same excitement as the BBC Micro did in the 1980s, and I know that it’s being carefully watched by education and technology experts all over the world.

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What about hardware interfacing?

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XD

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Well the masters graduate in computing science sat next to me doesn’t know what binary is, so that might be a good start.

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01001111 01001101 01000111 00100001

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01001100 01001111 01001100 00100001

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He knows hex though right?

That said, I learned almost nothing about computers in my MSc, I’m mostly self taught. It’s a nightmare – I’m desperate to learn unit testing but we’ve never done it at any of my programming jobs before. :(

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Just a little too late. :( I’m doing the remedial IT level 3 course at the moment and I would much prefer to be in an A-level Computer Science class. FML.

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Sorry for this comment but with what Gove is doing to education I would not want his approval.

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Some of us think he’s a damned good thing for education in this country (and so do many of the teachers I meet). We think this is an overwhelmingly positive development for kids.

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You’re very much in the minority there, liz. Case in point: adding a subject to what amounts to a “list of preferred subjects” before he’s even established a curriculum for that subject. Classic Gove, that. All fur coat.

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Effectively banning science for numpties is a good start. I think it was spelt ‘GCSE Science Double Award’ when I sat it.

As for a computer science GCSE you could just start with the Usborne Guide to Machine Code for Beginners (published 1983) which is a book suitable for primary school children with 8 bit micros and teaches assembly language for two different CPUs, is illustrated with hand drawn robots who move 1s and 0s into different boxes to explain how flag registers work and integer overflow occurs amongst other things.

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So would you prefer Computing to not be in the “list of preferred subjects” and potentially be marginalised? The curriculum comment is a red herring — schools are currently free to follow the old Programme of Study if they want but don’t have to if they don’t want to. They can make their own or use one from another school or use Computing at School’s etc etc. How is this worse than no choice at all? (Although the old ICT PoS is actually quite flexible and allows for lots of computing for example — most people who knock it have never actually read it (e.g. people often moan that it’s all about databases even though the word is never mentioned.) Then again, some people still believe the media myth that ICT has been abolished ;)) .

What you do at KS4 is of course dictated by the qualifications that you are doing. Computing is increasingly popular I hear :)

As for the 2014 PoS, Gove and the Department for Education have quite sensibly delgated this to those who know what they are talking about, such as teachers, professional bodies and industry. Anyone who wanted to have an input to the new curriculum / PoS had a chance to do so at the end of last year. The result is likely to be both rigorous and rewarding.

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I’d rather the effort and publicity were put into developing a rigorous curriculum than into diverting the good feeling behind RasPi into fluffing up Gove’s pet project. The Ebacc’s main flaw is it has done nothing to challenge the lack of rigour within secondary education, instead effectively forcing schools to follow a set of “core subjects” that wouldn’t look out of place in 1955, all of which, it’s worth emphasising, have suffered from the same lack of focus on the curriculum that we see here. Gove’s been Education Secretary for nearly 3 years now, GCSE specifications have typically been revised twice since then (2010, 2012), but the actual content of the curricula haven’t changed since I sat them at the turn of the century, besides having coursework modules drastically cut or eliminated entirely, something I’m sure will work wonderfully for CS.

Yes, it’s nice that those in government are talking about computer science, but that’s just it – talk, and talk tainted by politics at that.

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You’ll notice that in my reply I didn’t use the word ‘EBacc’ at all. This was deliberate because what I think of the EBacc or Gove is irrelevant in this context.

What we are excited about here is that GCSE Computing has been recognised as being at least as rigorous as, say, physics and therefore has less chance of being marginalised by a school’s Senior Management and therefore will be available to more students than it used to be. As a teacher you should understand that.

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Count me in that minority as well.

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That is effectively saying “I only want improvements in state education if they’re done by a government I agree with”, which entails that you favour denying improvements to education when there’s a government you disapprove of.

Luckily such noseless spiteful faces can be outvoted in a democracy.

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I teach ICT (and now Computer Science – Yay!) for a living. Any conversation about our illustrious Education Secretary puts me in a quandary.

I view the shift of focus from ICT to Computer Science as a tremendously positive step, and believe Michael Gove should be congratulated for listening to industry and teachers, and pushing through the necessary changes to the NC. My school started teaching Computing GCSE for the first time this year, and I don’t think we’d have been able to convince the Leadership Group of the need to introduce this course without Michael Gove’s influence.

However, while I think it is very important to give credit where it is due, It also doesn’t detract from my opinion (and I know that many teachers in schools across the country agree with me on this) that virtually every other change Michael Gove has made since becoming Education Secretary has been to the detriment of schools, teachers and most of all pupils.

I’d love to expound upon this (at length!), but I fear it would end up incredibly off-topic.

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Liam — I think that you have voiced quite succinctly what a lot of ICT teachers feel at the moment. The sands are shifting and it’s all a bit fraught.

It would be good to catch up with you (and any other ICT/CS teachers) to discuss such “off-topic” thoughts — because this is where change comes from — you’re not going to BETT by any chance are you? (Yes, I know it’s the Catch 22 of teaching ICT!) Anyone who is at BETT, come and have a chat on stand B240 Friday/Saturday.

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They have announced a shift from ICT to Computer Science – does anyone think that anything will necessarily change?
After all when they introduced ICT it was lots of statements about digital-buzzword, nobody came out and said; “you are just going to use Word”

So now they have said it’s all going to be computer science – but will that just mean writing web pages with Javascript?

As a physics lecturer I’m a little concerned that compulsory science to 16 can be ticked off by a class in writing Javascript.

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You’ve begged the question! (And made a bit of straw man at the same time if you don’t mind me saying :))

The BCS proposal for computer science in the EBacc is worth a read. They actually benchmark CS against a physics GCSE, which is interesting ;).

Things have already changed profoundly and will continue to do so.

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hi liam. I’m a maths teaher in adult ed and worked as a programmer from the late 60s till 2000 beFore that.I am appalled at the things gove is doing some of which, like final exams and no course work even work against girls !
this is the only good thing I’ve heard.I don’t really want to get into an anti gove rant but I do want to express this opinion.

mean while it would be so exciting to see programming skills done well in school with resourses around thingsmlike r pi – at least adding it to the ebacc means it stands a chance instead of being sidelined with the other non bacc subjects

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Agreed.

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In Computer Science he is definitely listening and I give him a lot of credit for that. However that is only because of very strong lobby groups that have worked incredibly hard and with some powerful voices to back them up.

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This is huge. Those of us who have been lobbying for this had half-hoped for / half-expected it but I’m still gobsmacked.

To put it into context for those not conversant with the UK education system (or the EBacc specifically): it’s the educational version of this ;)

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Charles Atlas is for real? I’d always thought Richard O’B made that up for a certain musical… Learning something new every day makes the world FUN.

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Coding and testing are fine as a start to software science, and refilling the roles of today, it perhaps needs some focus on parallel systems architecture for the roles of tomorrow. I’d also advise Python plus one other language of choice to learn coding in. This is useful as it teaches comparative programming, helping with a more fundemental logic of programming. It won’t solve split infinitives, or the correct use of the word whom, but then CS was never about destroying the imagination, and replacing it homage.

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Interesting you should call out parallel systems architecture; Sophie Wilson is very keen to see that better represented in the curriculum too.

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I was just reviewing our Computer History Museum PBS-sponsored “Revolutionaries” interview with George Dyson (son of physicist Freeman Dyson and brother of computing industry observer and conference organizer Esther) , who wrote last year’s intellectual blockbuster, “Turing’s Cathedral”. He detailed the history of the close cooperation of U.S. and UK scientists, mathematicians, engineers, etc., during the 1930s through 1950s on both nuclear physics and the earliest electronic computing systems. Both efforts included a LOT of man-and-woman-power – the original meaning of the word “computer” between the 1600s and 1940s was a person (usually a woman) who performed calculations by hand, generally to create mathematical tables that we real engineers relied on through the early 1980s (e.g., the legendary Chemical Rubber Company Handbooks) until slide rules were finally replaced by inexpensive electronic calculators and computers.

A very interesting point Dyson made in the book was that the U.S. Army’s ENIAC and follow-on MANIAC was that they could be reconfigured (via patch panels) to maximize parallel processing on a given problem. Even ENIAC could perform the equivalent of what would today be a 16-core processor, albeit as a 40-digit word decimal (not binary – too difficult to debug the hardware in those early days) machine running at a few thousand additions/second.

Liz – I completely forgot to mention last Spring that the Computer History Museum inducted Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber into our Fellows program in April 2012 for their work on the BBC Micro and ARM processor architectures (http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/current). They were inducted along with historical “lightweights” like Ed Feigenbaum for his AI and expert system contributions and Fernando Corbató for his pioneering work in timesharing and multi-access computer systems – not a bad crowd with which to be associated! Somehow, I became distracted by some other minor events going on at the time, like prepping for the Maker Faire in San Mateo in May and finally getting my big, fat paws on my first (loaned) Pi board.

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What we need is a bottom up curriculum. I actually have most of one developed, I just haven’t had the time to implement it yet, but the idea is you start from a finished program, show off the parts of it, the let the kids mess with it, then let them do their own thing for a while, then test for comprehension. That’s the way it worked with the old type-ins (the ones that weren’t a bunch of binary and a bootloader anyways). You got the code, you could see it, you learned it as you typed it in, then you changed it yourself to say things like “You lose, idiot” then you knew how to program.

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I’m a little confused. Broadly speaking, in Canada people who study Software Engineering are the ones that specialize in coding and testing, while those that study Computer Science are more keen on algorithms design. Obviously, CS students take software engineering courses on testing and coding, but it’s not the main concern in the program.

Now I’m very biased – CS grad after all :) -, but I’d rather spend a semester learning how to make sorting algorithms run in O(n log n) instead of learning how to use NUnit.

Mind you, I agree that anybody who programs must know about coding and testing if they want to enter the workforce, but to force that on a computer science program is akin to teaching chemists about proper lab behaviour: it’s important to learn, put it gets picked up as a work habit anyways.

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In the UK, school teaching of anything computer related has tended to be lumped under ICT – Information, Computers and Technology. My kids were expected to be able to use a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation tool and perhaps edit a bit of video. In fact if they used MS Office to complete work in other subjects they could be awarded the qualification.

It was pretty pathetic and meant that almost no teaching of anything related to computing theory (algorithms) or practise (programming) took place until student reached Further or Higher education at age 18+.

It is an enormous leap forward now that ICT has been binned and GCSE (14-16) and GCE (16+) courses are being designed that should include (IMHO) both computing theory and practise. At 18+, no doubt, it will remain possible to take computing courses that are biased more to a theoretical (science) POV or to a practical (engineering) POV.

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Contrary to what the press would have us believe, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) hasn’t been “binned” — it remains compulsory at all four key stages (which is as it should be — ICT isn’t an alternative to computing, but a very useful subject in its own right, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater). Currently schools are free to teach ICT how they like at key stages 3 and 4 until the new Programme of Study comes into force in 2014 (this will undoubtedly contain a strong computing and computational thinking component).

All the big UK exam boards offer a computing GCSE (EdExcel’s is still to be accredited I think). OCR have been running theirs since 2010. All include both computing theory and practice. A-level Computer Science has been going for ever. It’s a rigorous and challenging A-level.

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I’d just like to say that I got an A at Computer Science A level. So there. The only A I ever got at anything. And that was when A levels were REALLY HARD etc etc blah blah. (1984 and all that).

Hi Clive – enjoying the new job?

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“…and testing…” – blimey Canada is way ahead. I’m emigrating there now. Testing just isn’t seen at all as a science, or part of wider computer science by most Uni’s (repeat exception from above: Kudos to Reading Uni for being an exception to what I write).

The funny old thing is that there is enough understanding and technique (and I’m not just talking ISEB / ISTQB Foundation folks) for testing to be regarded as a science in its own right.
But hey I’m straying off topic so I’ll be quiet now.

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I’m fairly confident that a good curriculum will be chosen whatever we suggest here. I hope though that the course would cover a fairly broad range of computing topics allowing the student to find out what they favour the most. Hardware and software aspects, low level and high level programming languages and, perhaps towards the end, some education of formalised team development practised that they would likely encounter in employment. Development life cycles, testing and various source code control software (svn, git, cvs etc).

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Mission Accomplished!

You guys must be over the moon. This was pretty much what you set out to do, and it’s great to see it coming to fruition.

Pub?

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Looks like mission accomplished on phase 1. Now to phase 1a: Building a droid army for world domination.

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Could I take Computer Science for GCSE?

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Depends on whether your school offer it, but yes, some of the exam boards are now offering a CS GCSE.

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A coursework-driven overview and implementation of software engineering and hardware maintenance concepts. That’s what I’d like to see!

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I am a self-taught programmer working on engineering problems, though I have a civil engineering background and did maths, physics and chemistry at A level – mini-computers were the new thing when I was studying at school and I’m old enough to have started my programming on mainframes.

I applaud moves to change the emphasis of computer training in schools. However I worry about how many ICT teachers will need re-training to be effective at teaching GCSE Computing? Has this been costed and planned. Or are we relying on their enthusiasm to train themselves?

Mind you, once the children get their hands on a RasPi in school, perhaps they will be teaching the teachers, (as used to happen with BBC Bs).

As a point of interest, does the GCSE Computing include logic, problem analysis and data design techniques as well as programming and testing?

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Most of them I expect will need to be trained. That’s the Government’s job, the ensure that teachers have the correct qualifications to do their job.

I also expect the pupils to show the teachers a thing or two!

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I’m a Computing teacher (NOT the same as ICT, although I also teach that) for ages 13-18. I’ve taught A Level computing, and was with the first group of schools to offer GCSE computing when OCR made it available.
I have a Masters degree in Computer Science and have written and sold software in PHP and JAVA.

In my opinion, adding CompSci to the e-bac is wrong. This is why:

1. Computing is NOT for everyone. ICT is for everyone – everyone will have to use a computer at some point, will have to use basic spreadsheet functionality, will have to produce business documents, and will have to do basic graphical work. Only minority of students will ever end up programming. Adding CompSci to the e-bac will put pressure on schools to make it compulsory, ditching ICT in favor of computing. Students will then leave school able to make a cat move around in scratch and convert binary to hex, but be unable to do the things that 95% of jobs will actually require of them.

2. Gove’s idea of “rigorous” is one exam at the end of a course, and e-bac subjects will end up following this model. This means that students with an e-bac in computer science are good at short term cramming. They will have answered some questions about it on paper, but may well have no practical experience of the development life cycle. Coursework or controlled assessment is a MUCH better method of assessing a student’s practical abilities, but these methods are being removed from e-bac subjects in favour of “rigorous” final exams.

Computer Science is a very important subject, and should be offered as an option in every school, but it is not for everyone, and needs to be taught and assessed properly. Making it an e-bac subject goes against both of those principals.

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Learning CS would drastically change the focus from learning someone else’s program interface whilst subtly weaning them from these nice things that nice people with CS knowledge created.

About the spreadsheets and office tools etc. students would be able to use them with ease thanks to what programming logic had been gained from experience; sure they might need you to point where the button is to create a macro, but they’d soon get the hang of it without a teacher’s input.

Bring CS, you might have to step up your game as a computing teacher teaching children how to create text boxes in MS Word, but at least you’ll be teaching those interested in IT something with a lot more lasting value.

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I’d like to see a realistic curriculum where we don’t suddenly assume all kids need to be computer programmers. It’s something kids should be given basic exposure to in lower school, but then an option when they get to choose GCSEs.

For a reason why, go and visit your local secondary school and observe the kids who are forced to do GCSE RE or PE who don’t want to. Observe how the current generation of school kids react to being made to do things they don’t see the value of.

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I don’t think anyone has said we need to force people to become programmers. However, computers are now a critical part of everyones life, so there needs to be some sort of teaching of how and why they work, and programming does come in to it.

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Hi,
can anyone tell me where B/TEC in ICT course at secondary school fits into all this?
Thanks

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Well it is all right having ict and/or computer science but where the hell are the electronic engineers coming from to build the machines to run the software on. I teacher electronics at a state school in the uk as part of the Design Technology dept and I can tell you all that DT is still looked down on by governments. We are still seen as the part of the schools where you send the non academic pupils without them even realising the level of maths required for gcse electronics. Ebacs (well the name has now been scrapped) will only undermine my subject more, after all its obviously more important to read ancient liturature and know the capital city of pakistan and now the name of the king who died at such and such a battle than it is to know how modern electronics work isnt it Mr Gove. Sorry rant over.

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In all fairness, Gove didn’t wake up one day a year ago and think, “Oh dear, haven’t we marginalised and negelected computing education for the last twenty years? Let’s make it compulsory at all key stages!”.

What we are seeing now (Computer Science GCSEs; EBacc; new computing curriculum etc) is the result of years of freely-given, hard work by grassroots organisations like Computing at School and others, who simply decided to roll up their sleeves and change things. Perhaps a DT revolution is ripe? At least you have a subject to build on — we had to rebuild ours from the ashes ;)

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