Computer science as a school subject

Abstract

Computer science is one of the richest, most exciting disciplines on the planet, yet any teenager will tell you that ICT (as it is called in UK schools --- "information and communication technology") is focused almost entirely on the use and application of computers, and in practice covers nothing about how computers work, nor programming, nor anything of the discipline of computer science as we understand it. Over the last two decades, computing at school has drifted from writing adventure games on the BBC Micro to writing business plans in Excel. This is bad for our young people's education, and it is bad for our economy. Nor is this phenomenon restricted to the UK: many countries are struggling with the same issues. Our young people should be educated not only in the application and use of digital technology, but also in how it works, and its foundational principles. Lacking such knowledge renders them powerless in the face of complex and opaque technology, disenfranchises them from making informed decisions about the digital society, and deprives our nations of a well-qualified stream of students enthusiastic and able to envision and design new digital systems. Can anything be done, given the enormous inertia of our various countries' educational systems? Sometimes, yes. After a decade of stasis, change has come to the UK. Over the last 18 months, there has been a wholesale reform of the English school computing curriculum, and substantial movement in Scotland and Wales. It now seems likely that computer science will, for the first time, become part of every child's education. This change has been driven not by institutions or by the government, but by a grass-roots movement of parents, teachers, university academics, software developers, and others. A key agent in this grass-roots movement---although not the only one---is the Computing At School Working Group (CAS). In this talk I will describe how CAS was born and developed, and the radical changes that have taken place since in the UK. I hope that this may be encouraging for those pushing water uphill in other parts of the world, and I will also try to draw out some lessons from our experience that may be useful to others.