New computing curriculum

PhaperPlane said:
I do think it's good but I feel more needed to be done to get more CS graduates into teaching. Myself or my friends who were on my course didn't know that the government were offering a £25K scholarship to get into teaching.
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The government are offering £20k if you get a First, BCS are offering £25k but they also want some industry experience to go along with your CS degree. (The £25k replaces the £20k btw). This is better than last year where the figures were £9k/£20k, the head of faculty for my degree pointed me in the direction of the BCS scholarship but then he was head of the local BCS so was somewhat better informed than a lot.

That said, even £25k is less than a decent graduate scheme and doesn't come with the pain and suffering that is a PGCE course!
 
Question for you RDM my lad has just gone into Year 2 so therefore is not party to this what exactly are they using is it that Scratch you linked before?
 
Xordium said:
Question for you RDM my lad has just gone into Year 2 so therefore is not party to this what exactly are they using is it that Scratch you linked before?
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Really depends on the school. Scratch is a popular option but far too many schools seem to be using the incredibly rubbish Espresso drag and drop coding.

Primary isn't really my thing though and I know it varies massively, most of my teaching this year is KS4 & 5 (GCSE and A Level) where we get to use text based programming languages.
 
Xordium said:
Does seem a bit ambitious to me when nationally most of the little darlings won't be able to number bond to 20 ...
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It is a bit of a worry considering just how scared of maths most Primary school trainees are never mind programming. But then Secondary isn't much better yet. The change from ICT to Computing is quite a step change and it really needs specialist teachers.

Saying that the KS1 & 2 curriculum is only 2 pages long and one page of that is preamble so I don't expect to see much difference for the majority of students in the short term.
 
You reached Key Stage 4

This means your digital know-how is up there with 14 to 16 year-olds. #DigitalGuruInTheMaking
 
Isn't teaching this stuff a waste of time?

Isn't most of this outsourced to India and China?

You only need a few engineers and a project manager from the West
 
Yeah, passed level 4 no probs (just got the 1st level 'data' question wrong).

I'm all for teaching IT at a younger age as we are at risk of becoming a nation of children whose definition of "computing" is confined to Facebook/Farmville etc, but goddamnit Leroy, it's IT not ICT! It's always been IT to me, and always will. Just like Starburst will always be Opal Fruits to me. Or maybe I'm just getting old :p
 
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craptakular said:
Isn't teaching this stuff a waste of time?

Isn't most of this outsourced to India and China?

You only need a few engineers and a project manager from the West
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I don't know about the rest of the country but there's a severe lack of software developers in London at the moment. Salaries, especially for mobile developers, are going through the roof.
 
Tunney said:
I don't know about the rest of the country but there's a severe lack of software developers in London at the moment. Salaries, especially for mobile developers, are going through the roof.
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I can only hope it continues that way :D. Should I ever want to close down my own unrelated company and get a job with someone else.
 
Tunney said:
I don't know about the rest of the country but there's a severe lack of software developers in London at the moment. Salaries, especially for mobile developers, are going through the roof.
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I should totally pretend I'm a developer...
 
PhaperPlane said:
I actually looked into ICT/Computer Science education as part of my dissertation as part of my degree in Computer Science. Here are my thoughts:
  • A problem with this is that the teachers need to be confident in their abilities in understanding and teaching the subject. If only a handful of teachers can understand this, then students will struggle to learn and may lose interest in the subject.

  • It's not for everyone. Not everyone I know understands programming or has an interest in learning it.

  • The 'Year of Code' project has failed. After the terrible interview on Channel 4 and an advisor to the project quitting after one week, it's fair to say that it's over. In fact, Lottie Dexter has also quit - after being on the job for four months.

I do think it's good but I feel more needed to be done to get more CS graduates into teaching. Myself or my friends who were on my course didn't know that the government were offering a £25K scholarship to get into teaching.

It's a bit scary how 25% of adults couldn't get past Key Stage 1.
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Teachers are a big part of the solution and problem, I had a good teacher one year and excelled, in the second year I had a poor teacher and did not do so well.

The problem with the government now is they are keen to jump on bandwagons of successes from other countries/economy boosters but fail to carry it through. Seems to be a strong conservative trait.

The quiz was too easy! I could have even answered without the multiple choice, then again it was basic questions.
 
Why such a focus on development, not saying it is unimportant, but IT is a varied field. They should teach the business and system support sides of IT as well.

In my opinion the entire syllabus should be much more business focussed from a very young age, all the subjects should be taught in a such a way as to how this knowledge could be applied in a job, not just knowledge for the sake of knowing it.

But what we find is that most of the people involved in teaching and creating the syllabus are usually anti-capitalist.
 
anything I don't mind said:
Why such a focus on development, not saying it is unimportant, but IT is a varied field. They should teach the business and system support sides of IT as well.

In my opinion the entire syllabus should be much more business focussed from a very young age, all the subjects should be taught in a such a way as to how this knowledge could be applied in a job, not just knowledge for the sake of knowing it.

But what we find is that most of the people involved in teaching and creating the syllabus are usually anti-capitalist.
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Alternatively most of the people involved in teaching and creating the syllabus are not as narrow focused as yourself?

Considering the number of companies involved in creating the new computing curriculum I think you would be hard pressed to say it is anti capitalist.
 
RDM said:
Alternatively most of the people involved in teaching and creating the syllabus are not as narrow focused as yourself?

Considering the number of companies involved in creating the new computing curriculum I think you would be hard pressed to say it is anti capitalist.
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RDM coincidently are you not anti-capitalist, well at least a bit marxist right?

Either way i am sure there are many exceptions but in general the teaching profession in the uk is not business focused from what i have seen of it. Especially the IT syllabus.
 
Education should be about the enquiry and pursuit of knowledge and then applying that. All my kids are doing this at school. There is no anti-capitalistic or capitalistic stance anywhere from what I've seen. History does seem to do a bit of pandering to the left and what is currently PC but non of my kids are interested in history anyway so I have not seen as much as maybe I could have to really offer a proper opinion there. But to say it should be business focused is wrong in my opinion.
 
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