Scot Comp Sci Edu

A reply to Bill Buchanan’s article: The Long-term Neglect of Computer Science at School in Scotland?

Firstly let me observe that the problem of CS in Scotland’s schools is a tough and perennial one. On the plus side, there are good people involved in its solution, at all levels: from the SQA computing group that I was aware of when I worked at College, to talented members of staff there who went out to secondary schools to help teach. Within schools, it would be invidious to name names but there is that North East teacher who helped in the review of Glow, the national IT system a few years back. Recently I have been involved as a Computing Ambassador to Primary schools and the HeadTeachers, in particular, and front line staff recognise that there is a debate to be had. Finally, there are various “Digital” staff throughout the Scottish educational establishment including the commercial operations supporting it. But I would concur with your point on decline as I am not so sure we have come such a long way from when I wrote about an Apple school IT presentation.

I would offer that there are many reasons for the long term lack of progress, the first prompted when re-reading the article:

• Poor infrastructure at schools and elsewhere: there would appear to be a divide for such as wifi in that if your school is old or in the wrong part of town it seems to be problematic.
• Poor investment in computer technology. There seems to be no shortage of cash for computers — Chromebooks seem to be the new ipads but beyond this, for say IOT resources, nothing. This seems not to be unusual, as I purchase resources for when I do Science Clubs.
• Poor CPD support. My experience with taking computing on the road has been out-of-date materials (you know who you are). Poor support from Apple Corp — we await Scratch 3 since earlier versions did not work properly on their platforms — there was ScratchJnr but …. It should be said there are some useful teaching books on this subject but how widely is such information promulgated ?
• “A hotchpotch ?” Yes, that is a feature of modern CS. But I would not be so hard on GIFvsPNGvsjpg as there is a route here into not only the science of data compression but also art …

Briefly, to your solutions, let me not pick apart every one, but focus on a few practicalities:

• “pay (CS) teachers more”: ain’t going to happen with current Union/Local Authority cabal; witness Mr Swinney’s travails
• ditto “Get politicians to define a high-level KPIs” As Max Tegmark said on Sunday Brunch yesterday there is very little informed public discussion on such as AI (the new CS) apart from doom mongering.
• “Cloud”, “Crypto”, “Blockchain” etc That’s a lot of tech to have school teachers master. Have you seen the maths in the next big thing: Differential Privacy, as advertised by Apple and used by such as Google in Federated Learning. Such are too advanced.

A “Junior High” proposal

In the same way little Beebot robots have been successful at early stage Primary I believe we have to invest in such equipment for different levels of the curriculum. At the next stage I would suggest some sort of small robots, or something like Sam Labs, little plastic blocks as described here to get into visual programming. Python may be suitable at high end Primary but might be best left til S1 & S2. I would then focus on project learning with for example Cryptography, but on a wider front a la Simon Singh with his code book/CD/.. I would also encourage such as RoboGals or commercial organisations to run such. There are various competitions too where pupils and staff are encouraged to solve particular problems often supplied by professional engineering bodies. And finally some financial incentives to come up with substantial materials to support such learning. Once students have been inspired may be then they would choose CS qualifications more.

Finally I would like to contrast with other Modern Language (Python is one) provision in our schools as featured in this morning’s paper: “Language courses at risk amid staff shortage”. Despite enormous support with Primary Teachers trained in French & German & hereabouts Mandarin there are still clearly problems. I blame the government for its focus on the attainment gap, the result has been that that which does not promise improvement in National Testing is relegated. This despite the clear benefits to native speakers of alternative culture appreciation, as appreciated by the powers that be by the resources they put into the Gaelic Language.

In conclusion I would re-iterate that this is a tough problem.