Project to encourage more girls to study computing

The Department for Education has granted £2.4 million of funding to the ‘Gender Balance in Computing’ research project, which will trial a number of new initiatives aimed at improving girls’ participation in computing.

Research by the University of Roehampton and the Royal Society has recently found that only 20% of candidates for GCSE Computer Science and 10% for A level Computer Science were girls.
 
The project will respond to challenges thought to be stopping females from studying computing, such as a lack of role models and misunderstanding of the careers it can lead to. It will do this through a range of tailored interventions, all run as randomised control trials. The effectiveness of each intervention will then be measured and add to the evidence base of how to support more girls to study computer science.
 
Over 15,000 students and 550 schools across England will be involved in the trials, which will run from 2019–2022 in key stages 1–4. The study represents the largest national research effort to tackle this issue to date.
 
‘Gender Balance in Computing’ is a collaboration between the consortium of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, STEM Learning, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and the Behavioural Insights Team. Apps for Good and WISE will also be working on the project. ‘Gender Balance in Computing’ is one of the programmes associated with the wider National Centre for Computing Education – as part of an overall £84 million package to improve computing education in England by providing support for computing teachers at all levels, from primary to A level.
 
Sue Sentance, Chief Learning Officer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, said: “The challenge of encouraging more girls to take up the subject has long been a concern, and overcoming it will be critical to ensuring that the nation’s workforce is suitably skilled to work in an increasingly digital world. I'm very proud to be working with a range of excellent organisations on this important research project on such a scale, and together, we have the opportunity to rigorously trial a range of evidence-informed initiatives to improve the gender balance in computing in primary and secondary schools.”