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NESTA - Next Gen.

Following on from an article on the BBC about Raspberry Pi, this next gen report has some interesting findings.

The scariest stat which I picked out from the BBC website was "out of the 28,767 teachers who were awarded Qualified Teacher Status... in 2010, only three qualified in computing or computing science as their primary qualification"

Having worked as a computer science teacher for a year in a school that was a specialist in Computing I can concur that the uptake in Comp Sci was woeful. 2 Students for A2... The other teachers backgrounds in Computer Science was also fairly woeful (most knowing a bit about Office but still a paltry amount even about that). I couldn't speak for my counterpart that I was covering however. I suspect they were fairly up on things.

All in all what kills me is that Computer science is not a secondary level subject. Areas are often covered, a little in IT, a little in DT subjects (if kids choose Systems and Control or Electronics) and obviously a little in phyiscs and maths. However these are not taught with any intent of bringing them together.

I think the least schools can do without having to wait for the curriculum to change is to build up a "maker culture" in schools. Evening and lunchtime meetings where kids can fiddle with programming / electronics and mix it with other areas they are interested in such as art and music and learn some basic concepts that will whet their appetite for the subject. Little gadgets like the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi will hopefully help in this area!

Original article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16424990

Comments

James Printer said…
Not I

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