I am interested to hear the findings from the latest SCARI computing report today at King's College London - worrying but not suprising reports of a decrease in girls taking a computing related GCSE. What do we need? ✅ Real world applications of computing skills ✅ Meaningful projects that link directly to the world around us ✅ Creativity and collaboration Our computing curriculum in England purpose of study embodies these things but they are getting lost and it is putting a wide range of learners off the subject. There aren’t any opportunities for a broader computing GCSE so the experience gets narrowed at KS3. We can do better! We will do better! See a summary in the Guardian: https://lnkd.in/e5rB-wPi #Inclusion #Computing
Phil Nelkin
2mo
The article says that the numbers of girls taking Computer Science has dropped since the change of syllabus from ICT. Well, ICT is a different subject and easy to gain top grades in. Computer Science is challenging and so needs creative, knowledgeable and dynamic teachers who can excite all pupils. Unfortunately, the young staff who would have gone into teaching a few years ago, are now in jobs which pay well and offer flexible home/office working. In both of the girls' schools I taught in, KS3 was a mixture of creative coding and graphics, animation and web design. The girls loved it! GCSE numbers were great although you had to be clear about what the new Computer Science included! Unfortunately, subsequent staff, who were great Computer Scientists, got rid of all the digital creativity and made KS3 a GCSE lite subject. They didn't have the knowledge or experience of using the Adobe suite, etc. So ... if the syllabus changes or the boards offer a digital creativity course, who will teach it as many of the teachers who had these skills left the profession when coding came in! There are some great teachers and the number of girls excited and taking the subject in these schools is healthy. It all comes down to recruitment.
I look forward to hearing the findings of this important research by King's College London in more detail later on today. We know that there are brilliant teachers around the country doing some incredible work; but unfortunately not nearly enough of them. And even they are hindered in their efforts by the course specifcation, lack of time and resource etc. I agree, we need to do better. Ukie's proposal is to introduce a new Digital Creativity GCSE qualification, that will hopefully help to tackle some of these issues. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-years-inspiring-digital-creativity-uk-ie-6asuc/?trackingId=JsRYlC%2FSiZeJtdw5xQdHxg%3D%3D
Interesting but I feel largely this is because people aren’t teaching it those that are are doing a grand job with inclusion.
This is disappointing. Computer Science and coding can be really fun. And getting women in coding is very important. There is so much that can be done in the classroom to make it more accessible for everyone. Getting teachers to teach CS is also very difficult. ⚡️Dora Palfi and the Imagi team have been making strides to get girls (and non coding teachers) into code. https://www.teachingpython.fm/132
Director of Flip Computing | Inclusion-first Computing
2moI have added my more detailed thoughts here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-replacing-gcse-ict-computer-science-flip-computing-jyqve?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via