With the continued advances in technology and computing, there have been many claims recently that schools are failing to keep up with the changing times. This has prompted education secretary Michael Gove to announce plans to overhaul Information and Communication Technology, or ICT, classes in schools and replace them with an updated computer science curriculum. This news will no doubt be welcomed by teachers and students alike, who have been bored by lessons that teach them how to use Word and Excel, without challenging them or going into advanced computing techniques.
The new plans are to create an “open source” curriculum that teaches computer science more comprehensively to students. The advantage of this is that it will give more freedom to schools so that they can use teaching resources that have been designed with contributions from experts, such as academics and employers who are very knowledgeable about this subject. No longer will students know more about their O2 mobile phones than the computers they use at school, and no longer will their learning of computer technology be limited to an out of date system of classes. This announcement will hopefully silence businesses who have been expressing concern about the small number of computer-literate students that emerge from education.
This new curriculum could have enormously beneficial effects in just a few years, with young children becoming better versed in computer science. The hope is that children as young as 11 will soon be able to write sample 2D computer animations and more, which would advance the possibilities for future development in the computer world. In the near future, we should see a new computer science GCSE in schools and an overall expansion of lessons and knowledge of this subject. Hopefully these developments will create a greater interest in computer science among students of all ages, so that the popularity and awareness of the importance of learning about computers can grow.