Well here’s a surprise. Apparently, students are abandoning Computer Science in droves. Many of us in ed tech have been warning for ages that this would happen, and that girls in particular were being put off from taking the subject. Now the BBC has picked up on it, in a report by Rory Cellan Jones entitled Computing in schools - alarm bells over England's classes.
What I find galling is that nobody responsible for this situation has stood up and said “Sorry, we got it wrong”. They have pointed out that their preferred more balanced version of the Computing programme of study was rejected, which is true. I have even heard one person state that the reason for the emphasis on coding is that the media focused on it, which is dubious. That wasn’t the impression I had at various conferences — see, for example, my article The hidden messages behind the Year of Code.
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cross-posted at www.ictineducation.org
Terry Freedman is an independent educational ICT consultant with over 35 years of experience in education. He publishes the ICT in Education website and the newsletter “Digital Education."
