ICT classes leave students "bored rigid"

Schools not ambitious enough - or do teachers not know enough?

Excellent article. Spending all year teaching kids how to create, save, and open a file in Word and Excel insults the intelligence of the average school pupil.

These skills should be tested at the beginning of Year 7, and those without them should have a two week refresher - or they should be incorporated into ordinary lessos eg use of Word Processors in English, French and other humanities subjects; use of spreadsheets in Maths and Science; use of a database in Citizenship and General Studies/Personal Development (or whatever they call it).

Computing classes should be combined with Logic, so that they teach kids how to think, analyse, plan and implement ideas, culminating in program writing.

Kids don't usually not achieve because they are stupid, but because people don't believe they can do it. Yet, they manage things like Facebook, MySpace, BeBo and others pretty easily.

By SwissMac on 10 Feb 2011

i agree

As a 18 year old now studying computing at university, i can whole heartedly agree that GCSE and A level courses are so boring and pointless.
Also there was nothing worthwhile to learn, as you need no prior ICT knowledge to easily get to grips with Uni level.

In ICT lessons at school it was all about games and messing around to try to get past the schools filtering system

By jamieostrich on 10 Feb 2011

"It's time to put computer science on the curriculum," said Humphreys.

Just started looking round senior schools for my daughter, and I can honestly say I was gobsmacked to find out that even grammar and private schools don't teach computing these days. I left school in 1991 and clearly remember lessons on programming, boolean logic, interrupt scheduling. That was even before year 10. Maybe I was lucky to be in a decent school or just before the curriculum was dumbed down.
ICT is an utter waste of teaching time. Only one - private - school teaches Comuting and that is only at A level. The teacher I spoke to was a programmer so knows his stuff (unlike a lot of teachers) but has been overruled by the headmaster for GCSE level as they don't want to teach subjects where most pupils are likely to get less than an A grade. League tables I guess.

By 959ARN on 10 Feb 2011

I think they removed the more challenging stuff to help boost pass rates and grades.

Most people can open and save documents but a lot less people can program

By cyberindie on 11 Feb 2011

Computing at school

Readers concerned with the fact that so little computing is taught at our schools may be intersted in the Computing at School Working Group (CAS), a grass-roots group that is dedicated to fixing this very problem.

http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/

By simonpj on 11 Feb 2011

Computing in Schools

There exists a ready made qualification for schools to adopt so they should be able to cover the ICT (stupid term IMHO) knowledge requirements without wasting precious curriculum time prepparing pupils for a useless GCSE on non topics like how to mail merge, how to play games, etc. It is called the European Computer Driving Licence. But then, hey, what the hell do I know?

By jontym123 on 11 Feb 2011

@jontym123 continued

...the ECDL is probably more intellectually rigorous to boot!!

By jontym123 on 11 Feb 2011

Finally - an article that says what i think...

Finally - an article that says what i think...

I'm a 15 year old girl, a massive comptuer maniac - have 7 at home including 2 BBC Micros, and am always messihng around with them but i HATE I.T. at my school! Its a waste of time - ONLY ONE OF OUR IT TEACHERS AT OUR SCHOOL OUT OF THREE KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT! My one is a Bussiness Studies teacher and knows nothing - when my class FINALLY got taught about Hardware etc. (befroe that all we did for 4 years was word documents and basic spreadsheets) she didnt have a clue! she discribed a desktop computer as "the one with the harddrive in"! I ended up mostly teaching the class each componant! I thought this was only happening at my school - being it a Girls School of which no-one cares about comptuers, but im shocked to see that this is happening everywhere!!!

By feuerfrei_xx on 11 Feb 2011

Bored rigid...

...with articles on how Computing should be taught in schools.

Perhaps instead of teaching Maths they should be taught accountancy.
Perhaps instead of General Science kids are taught surgery.

Yes, agreed, there should be programing/networking/computing courses taught in schools, but as an optional subject - not very many kids would actually be that interested in learning about logic gates or algorithms.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should perhaps try teaching a groups of teenagers something in which the majority of the class has no interest. Even the present ICT, while not being great fun, most of the kids know they'll still need it.

@feuerfrei - the fact only one of your teacher knew what they were talking about is likely the reason you had 4 years of docs & spreadsheets.
Not many programmers/developers/network admins want to leave their jobs to work in a school.

By greemble on 11 Feb 2011

@greemble.. I left a position as a Senior Engineer to work in a school - worst mistake I ever made. The teachers thought they knew everything about computers because they had taught it for 5 years.. (good example was spending 2 years making an access databse) the students knew way more than the teachers did but everytime they corrected the teachers they got a detention for "undermining the teachers authority"!!!

Surely as an employer if someone says to me I did ICT I can expect them to have at least a decent grasp of computers? @feuerfrei don't give up - keep on tinkering it's how I did it (my BSc in ITS is just as useless as GCSE ICT)

By cheesemonkey on 11 Feb 2011

Use of ICT

The ICT is simply intended to show the person is 'IT literate' - i.e. can use a computer in an office-type situation. It is not and never has been intended to be a computing qualification - there is a big difference.

@cheesemonkey. I cannot comment on the teachers you had to work with, but in my school the kids were encouraged to show their knowledge - if any corrected me, I'd ask them to show/demonstrate/give reference to whatever it was and if they were right, I'd congratulate them - things change fast in the subject & the kids knew it, so no 'undermining of authority' as far as I was concerned. My colleagues had a similar approach - we certainly never handed out detention for the students being right, that's just a way to discourage anyone from learning.

And I'll second cheesemonkey's suggestion of tinkering - hands-on approach is the best. Get an old machine or two & play - use Linux on it, that'll give you many more ideas of what's going on in there - use more than one distro too.

By greemble on 12 Feb 2011

If you want to study computing consider....

The International Baccalaureate, its a much broader qualification than A-Levels and has given my stepson an excellent headstart on studying Computer Science at Uni, Oh and he failed his ICT as the teacher did not like being proved wrong by his own students!

By SteveM on 28 Feb 2011

If you want to study computing consider....

The International Baccalaureate, its a much broader qualification than A-Levels and has given my stepson an excellent headstart on studying Computer Science at Uni, Oh and he failed his ICT as the teacher did not like being proved wrong by his own students!

By SteveM on 28 Feb 2011

If you want to study computing consider....

The International Baccalaureate, its a much broader qualification than A-Levels and has given my stepson an excellent headstart on studying Computer Science at Uni, Oh and he failed his ICT as the teacher did not like being proved wrong by his own students!

By SteveM on 28 Feb 2011

if you want to learn ict, dont take this course

This article is so true, as a current a level ICT student, i cannot believe how uninteresting a subject could be. It should be renamed "office worker studies" Computers and how they communicate globally is something that changes everyday and is really exciting. A course where exam questions include "what does http stand for"... thats not. This course needs real reform, students need something to get excited about, how to build a computer or where computers came from, when taught well and so exciting. Nerdy i know but please, someone make this course useful for future life. Please.

By robinson1741 on 7 Apr 2011

Our hands are tied

I am the head of ICT at a secondary school on the Isle of Wight and I can agree with most of the comments on here. We try and make the courses we deliver relevant by teaching software that may actually be useful. I have 'banned' our GCSE level classes from using Publisher, they use Indesign instead. Web design is done using CSS and Dreamweaver, and we are currently looking at how we can incorporate some PHP. This however requires a server that we can use, but that we cannot afford. We try and use other Adobe products, where possible as a way of using industry standard, professional design tools. ICT staff want to get away from the 'Office' way of things but it is difficult when the curriculum states what we should do. GCSE computing will be introduced next year now that it as actually available as a GCSE. Interest from the pupils has been high, especially when I mentioned making Android Apps. I think things are going in the right direction, but as with everything in education, its a slow process...

By gaviow on 3 May 2011