Advocates for computing in schools will tell you the change was a long time coming, but like many of Gove’s major initiatives, in practice, seemed rather rushed. With its implementation set for September 2014 (just in time, if one were to be entirely cynical, to impact the 2015 General Election), schools had just one year to prepare. And that, of course, was on top of other major reforms, including a new, more challenging curriculum in every subject area. It simply wasn’t long enough.
At the Academies Show last week, Professor Achim Jung of Birmingham University provided the cautionary tale of New Mathematics from the 1960s. ‘New Math’ was a brief, dramatic change to the way mathematics was taught in American schools, mainly as a knee-jerk, panic response to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik 1. It failed within the decade. Why? Mainly because teachers didn’t understand the content, and neither did parents. As singer-songwriter and university lecturer Tom Lehrer famously satirised, ‘It’s so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it’.
Now, 50 years later, we are in danger of a similar situation. Teachers were not taught computing at school, neither did they learn how to teach it during training. Even now, a year from its launch, teachers are still saying they are not confident delivering the content of the new curriculum; one survey put the figure at an alarming one in three. And it’s no wonder when teacher training is patchy at best. A recent research report revealed the national disparity, with just over one in three schools (34 per cent) admitting to not spending a single penny on training their teachers in coding – arguably the most daunting aspect of the new curriculum – in the past year, and nearly one in four (22 per cent) spending over £3000. But really, who can blame the schools that spent so little? Cuts to school funding have been brutal, and for most schools, the recent spending review provided little hope for improvement.
The government has poured millions into the new computing curriculum this year, match-funding projects backed by digital giants Microsoft, Google, Facebook and more. But what can teachers do when their schools are not devoting – or just don’t have – the time and resources needed for them to make the most of these opportunities?