Monday, April 02, 2012

Teaching Computer Science in Schools


This topic is the subject of debate in England at present. There is a move away from focusing mainly on office skills (word processing, spreadsheets etc) and towards more on programming skills. The British Computer Society (BCS) has sent a package to schools outlining their proposal. While our programme is based on the CXC syllabus this package still contains much of interest to teachers and, may be, to CXC. Among those partnering with BCS in this are Google and Microsoft.
From the proposal:
"Although existing curricula for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are broad and allow scope for teachers to inspire pupils and help them develop interests in Computing, many pupils are not inspired by what they are taught and gain nothing beyond basic digital literacy skills such as how to use a word-processor or a database."