13 January 2012

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, welcomes the Royal Society report “Shut down or restart; the way forward for Computing in UK schools” published today.

The Institute provided a substantial submission to the Royal Society and several board members of BCS Academy of Computing acted as members of the Royal Society’s advisory group.

Bill Mitchell, Director of BCS Academy of Computing, part of the Institute says: “I’m delighted with the findings of the report and the recommendations.”

Yesterday, BCS welcomed the announcement by the Secretary of State for Education given at the BETT show that endorsed the importance of computer science on the curriculum.

Together with input from Microsoft, Google and Cambridge University Computer Science department, CAS have also created a computing curriculum. This has been endorsed by both Microsoft and Google as describing important principles and concepts that are suitable for schools.

Bill concludes: “This report, which identifies digital literacy for 5-14 year olds, information technology and computer science as key subjects, is an important and authoritative call to arms which BCS and CAS wholeheartedly support. The important steps now are to help schools to teach school children how to create digital technology for themselves through computer science and we will be using our experience and resources to provide teachers with any such assistance they may need.”

The Royal Society report

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