2014: The year of computing

There are 25,000 schools in England, give or take a few, including 20,000 primary and 5,000 secondary. In just over a year’s time computing will become part of the statutory curriculum for all those schools.

But in January 2011, it was very clear to anyone listening to the DfE that they were very determined to remove the subject of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from the statutory National Curriculum. It had a very bad reputation as a subject solely concerned with how to use software packages, in certain circles. It was clear it would no longer exist as a statutory subject. Worse from an ICT point of view, DfE also introduced around that time the EBacc performance measure for schools.  

The EBacc performance measure counts how many pupils achieve a grade C or above in specific subject categories (Maths, English, Science, Languages, Humanities). The DfE introduced the EBacc in an attempt to persuade schools to focus on subjects they believed were of paramount importance. Many schools did start to focus on EBacc subjects and give far less importance to subjects not included. The number of schools with pupils enrolled on EBacc subjects more than doubled over the eighteen months from its introduction, which illustrates the profound influence of the EBacc on school behaviour. The EBacc performance measure does not include ICT.

Those two seismic changes – deciding to remove ICT from the National Curriculum and excluding it from the EBacc – meant ICT was a doomed subject. Fortunately there was an alternative whose time had finally come; computer science.

A flurry of change
How did computer science come into favour when ICT was so poorly regarded?
In a speech he gave at the end of summer 2011, Eric Schmidt, the Chairman of Google, famously declared he was ‘flabbergasted’ that UK schools did not teach how software is made. This was a wonderful intervention that proved to be the turning point. However, that speech was part of a massive concerted effort by the entire computing community to introduce Computing into the school curriculum. The most important aspect of the Schmidt speech was that, as a consequence, the doors to the DfE were suddenly open.

Within a few months of that speech, two influential reports (to which we/BCS contributed) from Next Gen Skills and the Royal Society were being widely read in government circles. In addition, a computer science curriculum for schools had been written by Computing At School group (CAS) with help from Microsoft Research, Google,  Cambridge University and BCS, which was also receiving attention at the DfE. This was significant because computer science was not thought of as a rigorous subject discipline in the way that physics or chemistry were by DfE until the CAS curriculum appeared.

Because of the Schmidt speech, BCS working in partnership with CAS, has been able to successfully engage with DfE and help persuade them that computer science, together with digital literacy, really are essential for every pupil from the age of five.

So what has changed?
Changing the curriculum is only one of several transformations happening in schools at the moment.

DfE now counts computer science as the fourth science alongside physics, chemistry and biology in the EBacc performance measure for secondary schools (not to be confused with EBacc Certificate qualifications, which were going to replace GCSEs until they were cancelled in January 2012).

Several hundred computer science teacher training places have been created since September 2012.

The Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science has been created to provide a national Continuing Professional Development (CPD) infrastructure for schools, with the help of over fifty universities, including eighteen from the Russell Group. This currently consists of over six hundred schools and is being expanded to offer help for all the 25,000 schools who will be teaching Computing. Thanks to a DfE grant of £2m, there is every chance of success for the Network to fullfill its mission.

CAS has played a key role in much of what has happened. CAS exists to promote the teaching of computing and is part of the BCS Academy of Computing governance structure. Membership of CAS is around 3,500 and they run about 60 regional teacher hubs across the UK.

We, together with the Royal Academy of Engineering coordinated the development of the new Computing curriculum on behalf of DfE, working in close collaboration with CAS.

When announcing computer science would be the fourth science in the EBacc school performance measure, Michael Gove explained he was following the recommendations of our expert panel report, and that the new computer science GCSE would be added to the list of eligible qualifications provided we and the Royal Academy of Engineering agreed they meet the appropriate criteria. CAS was key in helping to compile that report. Together with CAS, we were members of the computer science expert group that were consulted on the appropriate subject knowledge requirements for new Computing schoolteachers and in partnership with the DfE are now running a Computer Science Teaching Scholarship scheme to help attract some of the brightest and best into the teaching profession.

We, with CAS, set up the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science back in September 2012, with funding from DfE as well as Microsoft, Google, AQA, OCR and Intellect.

We’ve only been this successful in achieving all of this by working with others, such as CAS, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, Next Gen Skills, Naace, ITTE, CPHC, UKCRC and Intellect. Many employers have also been central to making all of these changes possible and have been tremendously supportive to BCS and CAS, including Microsoft, IBM, BT, Facebook, Google, HP, Blackberry, Toshiba, Ocado and Metaswitch Networks.

So what’s next?
The consultation period on the proposed new curriculum has now closed and we should see the final version published in the autumn with it coming into force in September 2014. In our response to the consultation we made a number of recommendations. We strongly advised the DfE against dispensing with subject level aims and urged the DfE to review Ofsted’s guidance on e-safety as part of the safeguarding policy, in the light of guidance from subject experts.

We recommended the DfE to strongly urge schools to review the curriculum time they give to Computing as a discrete subject, in view of the changes to the Computing curriculum, with a view to treating it like other longer-established disciplines. We also urged the DfE to encourage schools to use information and communication technology to enhance teaching and learning in all subjects.

We advised that the DfE should make it clear to schools that the minimal nature of the KS4 Programme of Study for Computing should be read as an indication of the flexibility that is expected at KS4 for students to follow a range of different paths within Computing, and emphatically not as an indication that Computing is considered unimportant at KS4.

Put a plan in place
DfE should publish guidance that schools will not be expected by Ofsted to implement the full content of the new Programme of Study for Computing, but would instead be expected to have a clear plan for its staged introduction.

We called for the DfE to pay sustained attention to the task of training and equipping Computing teachers to deliver the new Programme of Study, (which they are helping to do through the BCS/CAS Network of Excellence), and that it ensures it highlights digital literacy in the curriculum at KS1-4 following the mention in the proposed Programme of Study.

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