So a few years ago the government made some curriculum changes with the aim that all kids would be taught to code in school from Key Stage 1 onwards.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study

Have those with kids seen much evidence of this actually happening in their schools?

My two (4 and 7, so KS1 and KS2) don’t seem to have had any coding in school at all.

We recently enrolled them in a local coding club, along with a bunch of my 7yo’s classmates, and the instructor there told me she was having to go right to back to KS1 fundamentals with the kids from our school. 😐

Reading around, this doesn’t seem that unusual, a recent YouGov study found that “67% of teachers in the UK believe they cannot teach coding effectively to schoolchildren between the ages of eight and 15 because of a lack of skills and teaching tools, and just under 40% said they did not have access to the right technology software and hardware to teach coding.”.

Sounds like a classic case of the gov promising something that sounds really good, but completely failing to actually provide the funding and support to make it happen.

Interested to hear what other parents (or teachers) on here have seen.

I think in early years it may not look like coding, more like procedural or computational thinking. Think Big Trak or BBC turtle

My youngest goes to Clwb Codio and learns using Scratch Jr. It’s an after school thing though. Not aware of any coding being done in school.

My daughter did Scratch at school – as above it’s not really sold as ‘coding’.

Have those with kids seen much evidence of this actually happening in their schools?

North of the border I am seeing many more schools teaching coding and IT in a more applied manner. All three of my kids did some coding (scratch and lego mindstorms) in Primary.
All three wrote Android game/app/something in first year of Secondary.

The study you link to also confuses UK with England – like so many.

My youngest (year 2) is doing Scratch (proper Scratch, not Jr) at school right now in lessons.

Clwb Codio

great name 😀

Yeah but they hadn’t even had that as far as I could tell Charlie.

The only vaguely procedural thinking homework I can recall was the standard “write down all the instructions for making your bowl of breakfast cereal” and that was at KS2. Asking my KS2 7yo what she has done in “computing” at school and it is: word processing and using the internet. 🙄

According to the curriculum, KS1 (5-7 year olds) should be taught to “create and debug simple programs”.

Week 1 at the coding club she had the 4-6 year old class driving little robots around with an iPad, by Week 2 she had them sending a series of commands (as “emoji text messages”) to navigate them around a course. Way beyond anything school had done, event with the older KS2 kids!

The older class at coding club had to start on driving the robot too, since they obviously hadn’t touched it in school.

After that she got them up to speed fairly using Lightbot to learn to program, debug and think sequentially, and now has them problem solving with Tynker and Hopscotch. So I’m really pleased with their progress and all the kids seem to really enjoy it.

But it’s a bit crap that this is something they should have been getting in school as part of the national curriculum and haven’t been.

The biggest issue in teaching coding is the demographics of primary school teachers

Best thing to do is by a raspberry pi and play with your kids

Clubs doing scratch, but in my time as a governor it wasn’t addressed – even when another PG and myself raised it.

Until OFSTED becomes less of a KPI aimed organisation (I don’t inspectors particularly, more the overall presentation of results – maybe I’m unfair on OFSTED and its really DoE?) I don’t expect it to change massively.

Yeah, my daughters been coding with a micro bit and robots since she was about 7 or 8 as part of ICT classes.

First year of senior school next year, they are doing Robot C, and Scratch, then teacher said they are planning to try out Javascript! The school are dead keen on all the STEM subjects mind.

Best thing to do is by a raspberry pi and play with your kids

True. My 7yo had already done Lightbot and Scratch Jr at home (as well as putting together basic circuits and soldering). We have a RasPi, but she’s not up to Python yet so I’m keeping things graphical/physical for now.

My 4yo has a Code-A-Pillar and has done some of the basic Lightbot stuff with me too.

But it is disappointing that we’ve had zero support from school over this. Like most kids if she doesn’t see her peers doing it then she’ll be put off, which is why the coding club has been very useful.

I dont think the op understands how underfunded schools are currently.

Best thing to do is by a raspberry pi and play with your kids

Depends on the kid. My eldest isn’t motivated to do stuff like that, but she’s dead keen on creating games. So modding Minecraft is attractive; typing in her name and having it say hello (probably my first program) isn’t. She’s goal orientated.

Colleague’s son is writing Python in senior school.

Minecraft pi, plenty of free resources on hacking it.

My eldest isn’t motivated to do stuff like that, but she’s dead keen on creating games. So modding Minecraft is attractive; typing in her name and having it say hello (probably my first program) isn’t.

Minecraft Pi lets her mod minecraft using Python.

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started-with-minecraft-pi

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR4UGeUgJMg[/video]

Good article in The Guardian about this today:

“Ten days ago, the reality of the teaching of computing in schools was laid bare by a report from the Royal Society, and it was not pretty. More than half of England’s schools are still not offering computer science GCSEs. At the last count, the proportion of the country’s pupils who actually sat the exam was a miserable 11%.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/20/future-digital-children-analogue-betraying-generation-michael-gove

Learning Python would be a bit too much effort for the reward currently. We are starting with Code Kingdoms, still waiting to see how that goes.

Yep that’ll work. You might want to take a look at Hopscotch (linked above) if she fancies doing other game type stuff (moving sprites etc) with a graphical language. Or Scratch of course.

Asking my KS2 7yo what she has done in “computing” at school and it is: word processing and using the internet.

Been working as a firmware/software engineer for 10yrs, and it basically involves word processing and searching StackOverflow 😛

Yeah but it’s best not to crush their souls too early Andy. Things will be very different by the time they are our age.

(I’ve been a software dev since 1997, including last 13 years doing embedded/firmware stuff for a company you may know, judging by your username! 🙂 )

I’m a secondary school computing teacher. Provision in primary schools is, to be charitable, patchy. Provision in secondaries isn’t much better. There are a lot of ICT teachers who’ve been chucked in at the deep end with an all-new computing curriculum with no training or support. Some are keen and are training themselves up, others less so. Teachers with computer science or similar degrees thin on the ground. And in the state sector market forces don’t really apply to recruitment – just because a subject is short of teachers doesn’t mean that you’ll get paid any more.

So yes, it’s all a bit sketchy.

Here in Wales all children at KS2 and KS3 should have been given BBC Microbits I believe. I’m working in a S Wales Secondary and have found that whilst the kit should have been given to the pupils it is not always the case, thus the students can’t take it home and use it. There is a lot of software/ apps available for free for pupils to use, either on a laptop or via their phones but the input and output peripherals for the microbits are not that cheap unless purchased in bulk.

I really enjoy the small amounts of time I get to spend coding with the students, some of whom are now getting quite proficient but it is pretty much in a self taught way. There is no formal coding taught here in my school that I’m aware of, I just offer it as an enhancement periodically when time permits. I have no formal training in it to speak of.

http://microbit.org/ has a lot to offer

Thinking maybe I should offer to do talks or workshops or something at local schools… Do we think that would be well received?

anagallis_arvensis – Member

I dont think the op understands how underfunded schools are currently.

They should pay the teachers less.

They should pay the teachers less.

You know thats a great idea, its almost like the government thought of that with a below inflation pay cap or no pay rise for the last 7 years!!

If you asked me the question a few months ago I would have asked what you meant.And that as a primary teacher! Wy not use real words? Anyway, apparently I have been teaching coding on and off for years. Its not always obvious and younger kids may not know or tell you what’s going on in class. Resources and training are the issue. Many teachers won’t have a clue as its all a bit new and to see them in training costs money which isn’t there or is better spent on books, heating, or employing enough TAs. There may well not be enough computers that work to make it easy. At primary level it is often seen as something that can/should be left to secondary level and the time spent on doing all the things that parents should do. Not good but with a bit more than 5 hours in school day there isn’t time for everything.

I can’t really see the point/need to teach pre-secondary school coding, maths should provide all the starting point they need for logical thinking etc. Sure IT is a big part of the modern business world but coding is a tiny fraction of that, on-shore coding an even smaller part.

I think it’s great for parents to get their kids involved in computing (and not just gaming…) from an early age I just don’t think it should be pushed into already under-funded schools and led by people that often have little understanding of the subject.

I dont think the op understands how underfunded schools are currently.

I tried to make the point in the OP that the government hasn’t provided the funding or support to make this happen.

Our local school has the poisoned blessing of being a reasonably performing small state school in a comparatively affluent middle class area, so it gets no extra funding or grants and is noticeably struggling. Without donations and constant fundraising from the PTA it would fall apart. Which is mad. Education shouldn’t be reliant on charity.

FuzzyWuzzy: it’s like teaching science. A lot of the fundamentals is about a way of thinking and an approach to problems.

Coding teaches kids to break problems down, to think logically and sequentially and spot patterns. Not every kid doing it will grow up to be a full-time professional coder, but then not every kid doing science will grow up to be an astrophysicist.

The instructor at our coding club was a primary teacher for 14 years. She gets it. Her classes naturally mix in English, maths and art skills without the kids really realising it.

Coding teaches kids to break problems down, to think logically and sequentially and spot patterns. Not every kid doing it will grow up to be a full-time professional coder, but then not every kid doing science will grow up to be an astrophysicist

True but as I said, so does maths and to an extent the sciences. If I was a parent I’d probably try and get my kids interested in it but I don’t think they’d be disadvantaged in life if it wasn’t taught at their school but was in others.

Besides once AI takes over the killer robots will probably hunt down the programmers first as they’ll be the real threat, or something.

From my own experience I can say that maths and science never caught my interest in the way that coding did and (possibly as a result) definitely didn’t teach me the same skills.

But I accept that is anecdotal.

I tried to make the point in the OP that the government hasn’t provided the funding or support to make this happen.

So you did my humble apologies!!

Sounds like not changed much since the 80s. BBC micros but mainly used in after school clubs for the coding or more likely playing games. Otherwise used with educational software in lessons to teach other subjects. Later came in the PC and it’s all word processing.

On picking subjects for A level, had advice from potential unis on doing computer science and they said don’t do it at A level (or GCSE if available) as they end up spending ages undoing what they’ve taught and filling in the gaps that should have been taught. That was 80s/90s though.

Sounds like not changed much since the 80s.

I hope it has.

Seem to remember that in primary school we had one BBC Micro on a trolley that got wheeled into class and shared between two pupils at a time to play “Maths is Fun” type games.

In secondary school we had a lab with about 20 BBCs and a couple of these fangled Apples for “desktop publishing” and “art”

“Computing” in my secondary school was taught by a maths teacher who did the best he could. “Technological Studies” was a new subject and was taught by a poor woodworking teacher who was clearly about one page ahead of us in the textbook and completely out of his depth. We ended up overtaking him and helping him to teach the others. 😀

“Technological Studies” was a new subject and was taught by a poor woodworking teacher who was clearly about one page ahead of us in the textbook and completely out of his depth.

He was no Fred Harris.

The funny thing is (judging by YouTube anyway) a growing number of professional woodworkers these days use tools like CNC routers and cutters.
I’ve seen a few videos where they are hacking about with the raw G-code to get it to do what they want. So it seems like technology and coding found woodworking in the end 🙂