Europe stands at the threshold of computer science education

Europe stands on the threshold of a major revolution in the way we teach our children of computing. A succession of major European reports (Royal Society, Informatics Europe, CEPIS) has diagnosed the problem, and there is a settled consensus on what to do. Yet progress is slow and patchy. Let’s fix that!

It is no longer enough simply to teach our children how to use computers. To a large extent they know this already (albeit perhaps less than they suppose), but more importantly technology changes so fast that the subject is out of date before it hits the classroom.

What we should do instead is to teach our children the fundamental principles of information and computation, just as we teach them the fundamental principles of maths or science.  Although only a minority of our children will become professional scientists, we know that every child need to understand the physical, chemical, and biological world that surrounds them. Every child knows that electricity Is not magic: it travels along wires, at various voltages; it is generated in power stations; they consume fuel; and so on. But for many children, their sleek mobile phones are, in Arthur C Clarke’s famous phrase, indistinguishable from magic. Even an elementary education in computational thinking will help our young people to be well-informed and empowered citizens.

This foundational subject is called computer science, or (in some countries) informatics. So the challenge is this: to establish computer science as a fundamental subject that every child learns, from primary school onwards, just as they do maths, science, or history.

I am being careful to say “computer science” and “subject discipline” and NOT “coding” and “skills for employment”. A strong CS education will indeed set you up for a good job, but our revolution will have failed if all it delivers is fleets of Java programmers. It’s about ideas, not technology.

Progress is being made. Estonia has coding in the curriculum, and Greek children learn informatics from age 9. But it is England that has most wholeheartedly embraced the opportunity. From September 2014 the English National Curriculum establishes a new subject of Computing, a title that embraces computer science alongside a continued emphasis on the thoughtful use and application of computers. The new programme of study for Computing is only three pages long, but it is very explicit about the fundamental nature of the subject.

A huge teacher training programme is under way in England, generating a great deal of teaching material that is readily usable in any country. For example, take a look at Computing at School (CAS), the CAS Quickstart CPD programme, and the CAS Barefoot programme (aimed especially at primary). This material joins rich resources that have been developing over the last few years; think of Computer Science Unplugged, cs4fn, or code.org. You can find a summary of our journey in Code to Joy and lots more background policy papers here.

Despite all this excitement, educators, subject leaders, and computer scientists across Europe feel frustrated at the slow pace of change in their country. We should not be satisfied with this. CAS in the UK started as a group of four people and now has 17,000 members. (You can join, by the way; it’s not a UK-only group.) Let us reach out to each other across Europe, and speak with a common voice to our education ministries, our professional societies, our great companies, our universities, and convey an utterly compelling vision of informatics as a subject that all our children should have the opportunity to learn.

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