The Michael Gove BETT Speech

[SovietRussia]

It's such a poorly thought out idea though. Where are all these code-literate teachers to teach this new curriculum? Why would a computer science grad ever go on to do a PGCE? That career path would mean on average 8k less starting salary plus 1000x more stress in the job.

 

My Mum is a maths teacher and she's been drafted in to teach the new computing curriculum at her school. The thing is, she gets stressed and frustrated if she has to do anything more technical than plugging a USB stick in. According to her, this is a common theme amongst all the schools in her LEA - there aren't enough teachers with knowledge of the subject to teach the subject and there seems to be no plans to train existing teachers up either.

 

It's a great idea but, like a lot of things our government like to do, it's so poorly thought that I'd be suprised if this improves anything at all for most students.

 

+1 this, most software devs can earn big bucks working for Google or corporate companies and not have the stress of teaching.

[pcstru]

It's such a poorly thought out idea though. Where are all these code-literate teachers to teach this new curriculum? Why would a computer science grad ever go on to do a PGCE? That career path would mean on average 8k less starting salary plus 1000x more stress in the job.

I don't believe it's true. We have had 4 students working on placements, even the best of them found it quite tough going getting a job. From an employers POV, graduates often lack domain knowledge, which can be almost as important as being a good programmer. And at least with a proper curriculum, it becomes an option. No one with any real passion for IT would want to teach a room full of students powerpoint year after year after year.

It's a great idea but, like a lot of things our government like to do, it's so poorly thought that I'd be suprised if this improves anything at all for most students.

I'd agree it's not going to be a quick fix, but having the ship pointing in the right direction is necessary, if you want to travel to the right destination.

[TechMonkey]

It's such a poorly thought out idea though. Where are all these code-literate teachers to teach this new curriculum? Why would a computer science grad ever go on to do a PGCE? That career path would mean on average 8k less starting salary plus 1000x more stress in the job.

 

My Mum is a maths teacher and she's been drafted in to teach the new computing curriculum at her school. The thing is, she gets stressed and frustrated if she has to do anything more technical than plugging a USB stick in. According to her, this is a common theme amongst all the schools in her LEA - there aren't enough teachers with knowledge of the subject to teach the subject and there seems to be no plans to train existing teachers up either.

 

It's a great idea but, like a lot of things our government like to do, it's so poorly thought that I'd be suprised if this improves anything at all for most students.

 

AH Ha!!! Now this is something to get behind and kick him up the arse about. In my opinion the idea is good and sound and should be encouraged. The implementation is the place it nearly always falls down. Like 20 years ago deciding that Business studies teachers would be good at teaching this new IT subject.

 

I kind of like the idea of Maths being involved as it should have a strong hand in programming. May be she can offer logic problems for them to work on and then pass on to someone with the IT skills to help develop them into programs?

[GeekyPete]

I am gob smacked that on an IT technical forum we can not see the benefits of PROPER IT/computing teaching rather than the dreary watered down ICT.

 

My first post opened with it's not an either or...

 

I maintain we need User skills, graphic design, office, data analysis, etc. Mr Gove was saying that we can somehow do away with that and all learn to code.

No we can't, Proper IT needs to interface with the physical world. It needs real life applications and that happens where it collides with people. Users if you like. So no matter how much coding goes on you still need to teach people how to use the end result. OK You code, I do a little. How many people use your work? 1000? Coding needs to be taught, but for every coder there are a 1000 users. You can't replace good solid user training with coding, you need both. It's like teaching mechanics and hoping that somehow people will pick up on how to drive. Sure they'll know that pressing this makes you go faster and that slows you down. But that's not good driving.

 

Glib comments about a telex machine don't really hold water when what he's proposing is a ZX81. Where you NEED to Code in order USE a computer. The vast majority of people should be isolated from coding. There are too people who are living proof that a little knowledge is dangerous. Teach it, please. It will atleast foster some understanding of the demands of programming and make all our lives a little easier. But it cannot replace user training.

 

I have always maintained that no IT project is delivered until all the users are trained and know how to get the most out of the system. There is a parallel in education.

[pcstru]

I maintain we need User skills, graphic design, office, data analysis, etc. Mr Gove was saying that we can somehow do away with that and all learn to code.

No we can't, Proper IT needs to interface with the physical world. It needs real life applications and that happens where it collides with people. Users if you like. So no matter how much coding goes on you still need to teach people how to use the end result. OK You code, I do a little. How many people use your work? 1000? Coding needs to be taught, but for every coder there are a 1000 users. You can't replace good solid user training with coding, you need both. It's like teaching mechanics and hoping that somehow people will pick up on how to drive. Sure they'll know that pressing this makes you go faster and that slows you down. But that's not good driving.

The proposal is in three parts. Other than "Digital Literacy" the coding under the umbrella of "Computing" the real life use of technology is called "Information Technology". It's not a matter of dropping one in favour of the other, both should be on offer (and students should understand the difference between them).

[elsiegee40]

Apologies if this has been posted already... the BBC's take on the speech

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25842199

[rad]

The bbc article from 2012

BBC News - School ICT to be replaced by computer science programme

Almost identical to what he said today....

[pete]

I suggest the use of "Govewin" - if Michael Gove is in favour of your idea, even if it's a good idea, you've already lost the argument because: Michael Gove.

[maark]

One useful thing from speech among the soundbites- was not aware of udacity - some good free courses on there for more able students e.g. HTML5 Game Development - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

[Roberto]

I write some code certainly every week. I find the lack of coding skills in IT support people to be surprising and ... disappointing.

 

I can code. I've earned a living from coding in the past. I just don't like doing code. Scripting is a little different, of course... but coding isn't part of my job.

[LosOjos]

I think it's an excellent idea to teach children to code.

 

I very much doubt that they're going to stick 5 years olds in front of a Python shell and tell them to get on with it, but if they start to teach them computational thinking and problem solving at that age (which they can do with age appropriate tools such as BeeBot and Daisy) then it will stand them in good stead when they get to some actual coding later on in their education.

 

How many people here used LOGO at primary school? I did and it was life changing (seriously!) because for the first time it made me realise that computers don't "just work", somebody has to tell them how to do the things they do and I knew I immediately that I wanted to know how to do that. So imagine my disappointment when I found that my daughter had never even heard of it, nor anything similar. They do less programming now than they did 20 years ago! Needless to say, I got to work on her myself and she now happily taps away on Code Academy and is slowly learning to program Minecraft mods on the R-Pi using Python. She's 9.

 

Nobody is claiming that every child will become an ace programmer capable of writing industry standard software by the time they leave school (nobody with any sense anyway) but one of the most important aspects of school life, in my opinion, is to expose children to as much of the world as possible, otherwise they may find their passion in life too late to make a viable career of it.

 

Aside from the many other skills that children stand to pick up from learning to code (problem solving being a major one; I'm tired of kids seeing a problem and immediately giving up when just 5 minutes of thought and they could have solved it for themselves), it's about time we started showing children a wider range of options they have in life.

 

On a related note, I volunteer for Young Rewired State over the summer holidays, it's a fantastic organisation who have set out to bring coding to the kids and when you see how many incredibly talented young people there are out there, who are almost all entirely self taught because their school's don't offer courses and who only get to meet other young coders at this event each year, you can see that change is already happening, whether Gove stands up and preaches buzz words or not. Check them out: https://youngrewiredstate.org/

[hardtailstar]

I write some code certainly every week. I find the lack of coding skills in IT support people to be surprising and ... disappointing.

 

I have never learned to code and haven't needed to yet, However i will be learning to code soon,

 

With the world going towards apps on devices, my school has requested I look at making an app,

 

I think our school has a good idea about IT, we have a teacher who does all the IT lessons and does a mixture of office teaching and a bit of everything else. The year 4's are learning how to use Scratch at the moment.

[tmcd35]

I'm in the "can code - can't be asked to" club. While I agree coding is a useful skill that should be introduced at school, I personally feel that Gove's approach is to over emphises one headline grabbing area of a subject he know nothing about. Seriously, there's no reason to make coding a statatory requirement for 5 year olds who really should be spending the majority of their time honing their maths and english skills. Besides, as I've argued in the past, ICT is a much broader subject than coding on hand and powerpoint on the other. There's other whole more interesting area of IT that deserve a little more focus (although if I remember these discussions from the past, are actually included in extrememly small doses in the new curriculum).

 

At primary level this is just one more destraction to the list that is causing secondary teachers to complain at the general english and maths abilities of incoming year 7 pupils. At secondary level it should be a much smaller part of a much wider ICT curriculum.

 

Just my 2c

[Ephelyon]

Thinking about the conclusion of the thread I started on this very topic a little while ago, I believe that's where we got to in the end: we couldn't ultimately agree on precisely what "coding" means to the body of us (i.e. say, the majority) as IT pros ourselves, so what chance would Gove and other policy-makers have?

 

Depending on how you define it, "coding" could be seen as absolutely fundamental to computing. By other definitions, however - such as mine, which calls it a synonym for "software development" - it isn't. Consequently, how this policy is gone about will vary and will depend on the individual parties implementing and advising on it.

[LosOjos]

Thinking about the conclusion of the thread I started on this very topic a little while ago, I believe that's where we got to in the end: we couldn't ultimately agree on precisely what "coding" means to the body of us (i.e. say, the majority) as IT pros ourselves, so what chance would Gove and other policy-makers have?

 

Depending on how you define it, "coding" could be seen as absolutely fundamental to computing. By other definitions, however - such as mine, which calls it a synonym for "software development" - it isn't. Consequently, how this policy is gone about will vary and will depend on the individual parties implementing and advising on it.

 

I completely agree with the premise of your post, but strongly disagree that "coding" is synonymous with "software development" - as I'm currently doing a degree in software development I can tell you without shadow of a doubt that at least two thirds of the process don't involve a single line of code!

[Ephelyon]

I can imagine. It's because I'm defining it as a process rather than the way the OED describes it (which would include setting up a rule on Outlook as "programming"). We'll all have these built-in ideas based on our previous experience and I don't think any of them can be said to be Right or Wrong. In my case, for example, when I think of a "coder", I'm put in mind of a software/web developer whose day job is to create/develop executable programs or web apps. I'm not put in mind of a sysadmin who scripts up bulk operations to save themselves time or automate things for users (as I do, for example). I don't think there's any easy way to explain why I get that feeling, I just do - as will be the same for yourself and for many others.

 

But then, what exactly did we expect in a field with so little in the way of regulation?

[ICTLady]

I think it's an excellent idea to teach children to code.

 

I very much doubt that they're going to stick 5 years olds in front of a Python shell and tell them to get on with it, but if they start to teach them computational thinking and problem solving at that age (which they can do with age appropriate tools such as BeeBot and Daisy) then it will stand them in good stead when they get to some actual coding later on in their education.

 

 

^^^^ This. I have primary age kids myself and I would love to see them learning basic coding in the classroom (ewwwwwwwww, Govewin - *washes mouth out with soap* ). At the moment, they mess around with Scratch, so we're not expecting them to write long swathes of indecipherable code. But they drag and drop instructions from a list, and work out things like "I know how to move my character to the left - what if I want him to move to the right? How can I stop him going off the edge of the screen? I don't want him to be able to walk through that wall I created - how do I make that happen?".

 

As an ex-coder, I feel pessimistic about their chances of getting a coding job when they're older, but I think the problem-solving skills will stand them in good stead. It's a great chance for them to develop robust, creative methods of approaching things that they have absolutely no idea of how to do. "Let's try this.... oh, it didn't work, can we change it to make it work...." rather than "I can't do it".

 

Oh and

 

But lets face it, ask your Mum if she needs to know how to send an email, post a pic on face book or white her own app to control a virtual robot and see what her answer is. My mum is 72 and can do 2 out of the three of them.

 

My mum was an IBM coder in the old punch card days - she can't use FB though

[TechMonkey]

I maintain we need User skills, graphic design, office, data analysis, etc. Mr Gove was saying that we can somehow do away with that and all learn to code.

No we can't, Proper IT needs to interface with the physical world. It needs real life applications and that happens where it collides with people. Users if you like. So no matter how much coding goes on you still need to teach people how to use the end result. OK You code, I do a little. How many people use your work? 1000? Coding needs to be taught, but for every coder there are a 1000 users. You can't replace good solid user training with coding, you need both. It's like teaching mechanics and hoping that somehow people will pick up on how to drive. Sure they'll know that pressing this makes you go faster and that slows you down. But that's not good driving.

 

As someone else pointed out, no he didn't, just dropping the complete focus on that part.

 

But there are 2 ways to look at this.

 

One is that if you understand, at how ever basic a level, how something works or the thought behind it that you can use it/learn it better. That is why art lessons teach colour theory, perspectives, complementary colours. Having a basic understanding will help. Having the logic and understanding of what is under the hood helps to form a mental picture. Before you say it, no they will not need to learn how to program office to use it but it is a teaching method. Teaching basic theory of mechanics does help you drive better as you understand the forces acting on the car, what happens when you do certain things etc.

 

The second is why do we not extrapolate this idea to all the other lessons. Not everyone goes abroad so why teach languages? We don't need to understand the reproductive cycle or how genetics works to procreate, how our bodies work to live, how atoms interact for the world to keep going, so why teach science? History has all ready happened so no point with that, only a few people will be historians. Only so many people can be boat captains or pilots so no need for much geography. Etc etc etc etc.

 

Do we really want our nation to be a nation of Users? Or a nation of thinkers and understanders.

[localzuk]

Thing is 'software usage skills' get taught anyway, regardless of it being a curriculum subject or not. Pupils use these pieces of software in other lessons - science and maths do spreadsheet work, English uses word processors, geography/history have their presentations etc...

 

The point is there is no need for these to be a discreet subject, taught alone.

 

Whereas, computing is a discreet subject.

[Ephelyon]

This isn't about nations, it's about the majority versus the minority of people and the respective priorities for their needs.

[LosOjos]

This isn't about nations, it's about the majority versus the minority of people and the respective priorities for their needs.

 

Errr... wrong thread?

[tmcd35]

One is that if you understand, at how ever basic a level, how something works or the thought behind it that you can use it/learn it better. That is why art lessons teach colour theory, perspectives, complementary colours. Having a basic understanding will help. Having the logic and understanding of what is under the hood helps to form a mental picture. Before you say it, no they will not need to learn how to program office to use it but it is a teaching method. Teaching basic theory of mechanics does help you drive better as you understand the forces acting on the car, what happens when you do certain things etc.

 

This is where I have a problem with the concept of teaching 'coding'. When I learned to drive I was never asked to strip an engine in order to understand the mechanics of how it works, I was taught the function of the accellerator, and clutch and radiator, and their general relation to one another. I've talked before about how computers work through layers of abstraction. And while it's software that pulls off the trickery, you don't need to write code to understand how one component/theory effects the next.

 

To me coding feels like too low a level, much like striping a car engine to learn to drive. Much better to learn the function of the CPU, and the RAM, and the GPU and how they relate to one another. Unless we're coding Assembler, programming seems the wrong tool for the job. Writing programs in Scratch isn't really so far removed from Powerpoint presentations. You get an end result, but does it really explain any of the magic under the hood that's producing the results?

 

Coding is a useful skill and good for logical thinking. It most certainly should be taught (part of Maths IMHO ). But it feels like there's too much focus on one layer of computing and missing some of the more important stuff that might give better light bulb moments to students wondering how the magic actually happens.

[Ephelyon]

I was responding to @TechMonkey's point about a nation of users. Having said that, maybe it's because I've just got too cynical about Britain anyway... =]

[localzuk]

This is where I have a problem with the concept of teaching 'coding'. When I learned to drive I was never asked to strip an engine in order to understand the mechanics of how it works, I was taught the function of the accellerator, and clutch and radiator, and their general relation to one another. I've talked before about how computers work through layers of abstraction. And while it's software that pulls off the trickery, you don't need to write code to understand how one component/theory effects the next.

 

Funny you'd bring up learning to drive. The modern theory test includes questions on maintenance of your car. Eg. Knowing how to check oil levels, knowing how power assisted steering works, engine coolant levels, how to check parking break wear etc...

 

To me coding feels like too low a level, much like striping a car engine to learn to drive. Much better to learn the function of the CPU, and the RAM, and the GPU and how they relate to one another. Unless we're coding Assembler, programming seems the wrong tool for the job. Writing programs in Scratch isn't really so far removed from Powerpoint presentations. You get an end result, but does it really explain any of the magic under the hood that's producing the results?

 

Coding is a useful skill and good for logical thinking. It most certainly should be taught (part of Maths IMHO ). But it feels like there's too much focus on one layer of computing and missing some of the more important stuff that might give better light bulb moments to students wondering how the magic actually happens.

 

Most of computing is coding to be honest. Things like CPU/RAM etc... can be taught in a single lesson at the level we're talking. But teaching the logic of coding? That's a big task to work through.

[LosOjos]

I think some people are too focused on coding as a job and are missing the fundamental logic and problem solving skills it can teach which will feed in to all areas of life.

 

Even if a child never writes another line of code in their life once they finish state education, the ability to work through a problem logically will be invaluable to them for the rest of their life.