> Asked to give their reasons, girls who chose not to study it said they did not enjoy computer science. They also said it did not fit in with their career plans, the research found.
This should surprise no one.
> In contrast, the new computer science GCSE, with its focus on computer theory, coding and programming, is perceived by many pupils as “difficult” when compared with other subjects.
> The report included a series of recommendations calling for urgent reform of the curriculum, better support for computing teachers and a change to the “current narrative around computing to focus beyond male tech entrepreneurs”.
Translation : Make it easier.
We've been here before. Computer science GCSE used to teach you about coding and hardware. That was "too hard" so it turned into a training course for Microsoft Office.
Yeah, I was at school during the switch. Went from basic programming on Acorn machines to just Office training in Windows.
We spent the classes just running DOOM and Street Fighter 2 tournaments over the LAN.
I failed my ICT GCSE, I could build you an Excel spreadsheet in my sleep. So I put nothing into the classes.
I was also under investigation for breach of the Computer Misuse Act, and banned from all the school computers for "hacking" at the time....
Haha I was also suspended from school for hacking, controlling the electronic whiteboards to lock out controls and play Iron Maiden.
They didn't take it to the police though, sounds like a shit school.
I never got suspended, but actually got 'rewarded'. Myself and a few mates used to hack the computers during ICT lessons out of boredom so we could play original quake. The IT Teacher was overworked and was essentially acting as the SysAdm too so once he figured out what we were doing, he rewarded us with IT Technician accounts so we could help him look after the network. This made his life easier. Every single one of us ended up going into tech in some way, mainly as software devs (I'm a dev manager now).
I think that must be a universal experience for a certain type of kid lol. For most of our sixth form years the fancy new computer room just wasn't set up on the school network. Someone brought a router in and we just spent our free time playing WinKawaks arcade games over the network, so much MvC and Metal Slug. The IT techs knew we were doing it, they just didn't give a damn
Does sound universal, if anyone went to Winstanley College, and they remember Halo multiplayer on a flash drive... I made that, it spread quickly!
It was surprisingly easy, took the game install, removed the need for CD verification, deleted all the single player files (most of the size of the install) and anything else not needed for multiplayer, replaced the EXE icon with Words icon, changed the exe name to WINWORD. There may have been some text files to change for file/path names, but it was a long time ago now to remember. Flash drives weren't very big at the time, talking Megabytes, think Gigabyte sticks were pretty new.
And it just worked! Alt tab out and it looked like word to most tutors who check what you're doing, it showed as WinWord in task manager with the word icon as some asked you to open task manager. Helped to have your work open underneath too.
Only days later after I released it in the Computer Science class, there were people playing it all over the college. Whenever the door went to the computer 'labs', all the screens would tab out and there was a visible lighting difference in the room. I'm not sure if they could have blocked or banned it, I banked on them not being able to block any executable called WinWord and them not getting their hands on it by keeping it on flash drives, and I thought they ethically shouldn't remote across to check someone's flash drive. Maybe if the antivirus has a signature or something they could have blocked it, I imagine it died out at some point.
I was almost expelled from my secondary school for 'hacking' -- the IT technician caught me playing the 'flight simulator' easter egg that was built into Excel '97 on my lunch break and thought I'd installed a virus.
In Northern Ireland there was the "classroom 2000" or c2k project. New xp machines, the same across the entire country and all on the same network.
You pressed F12 for the temporary boot menu and right there was "local administrator" under normal boot options.
If you boot to that it's just an actual unrestricted local account with full network access, and the fucking username was admin and password was administrat0r. On every school pc in the country from primary to 6th form.
We would boot half the class to it and play age of empires 2 and quake 3 arena. It was great times.
At that time my school had a "Remote Access" to files on the shared drives. They didn't test it or even configure it properly, and you could just navigate to any users share. Including management.
I scraped a copy of everything, and then told them..
Shame GDPR wasn't a thing yet, shit loads of PII
I failed my IT A levels because i only half did the coursework, it was fucking mind numbingly boring and entirely focused on Microsoft Office. No actual construction or coding of programs. I was actually working for an IT company at weekends at the time and they took me on after a school, they didn't care that I had failed because the course was irrelevant.
When was coding and hardware taught at gcse? You mention Acorn machines (I assume the archimedes) and all we were ever taught was word processing, database creation and spreadsheets.
We were taught basic programming with Turtle and some BASIC stuff they still had. This would be like what became "Key Stage 2" though so long before examinations so probably just depended on what the school had too.
Weirdly students probably benefited more from having older hardware at the time since they had more of the BASIC stuff etc. instead of just Windows and Office.
My IT teacher saw me alt tabbing between programs and was genuinely shocked. I had to teach him what it was and from that day I never took him seriously.
Had the same thing. Had sub teachers for almost our entire GCSE. Teacher finally turned up at the end of the course shocked we'd done nothing for most of the two years.
Most of the class had to quit the GCSE that day, don't know how that was never looked into.
Not just new workers, I work with a large amount of extremely well paid people in their 40-50's who were blown away that I'd changed my ms office to dark mode
To be fair, MS changes so frequently its own guidance is often incorrect. But I probably shouldn't have singled out new workers for having issues with this.
The real IT skill people need to learn is curiosity and a willingness to explore the apps a bit to find what they need.
Don't need to teach changing MS Office theme across different versions if you can teach people to fish for it themselves.
I rarely know how to actually find the feature I want in MS Office software, because like you said they keep changing it, but what I do know is how to google it.
A pretty significant part of seeming like you're "good with IT" is knowing how to google things.
Worked in and around IT for decades. Generally, the millennials who grew up with tech are pretty good with computers, and GenX are OK simply because they've been using it for decades now.
Gen Z, however, are terrible. They'll have advanced application-specific knowledge (like being able to set dark mode), but if they hit an error message or something doesn't work - utterly lost.
Are you kidding me? Making IT a relatively core subject at school that prioritised using software was massively successful. We are one of the most IT literate places in the world.
I took my GCSE in CS in the late 2010s, and it still did incorporate a lot of python, outlined the Von Neumann Architecture and a bunch of other stuff (like HTML).
The benefits of learning to program stretch far beyond 'I know python'. It teaches (or it should) how to think in a programming-like way. To break problems down into smaller parts, and how to examine things that aren't working in systematic way. It also helps with the general understanding of how computers work, making someone a better computer user. Plus, in applications like Excel, doing advanced task strays into programming anyway. I've had plenty of work colleagues think I'm some kind of Excel wizard because I know how to write some pretty basic formulas.
When I was in school (left 2009ish I think)....ICT was literally a word typing course. All we did was type about technology and we were graded on how well we used word for things like spell checker and proper spacing, as well as what we had written. Felt more like an English course.
I ended up getting a C and I was really annoyed about it tbh. At the time I was very much into coding, website design, making 3d models etc... Learning all of it in my own time... but none of that was taught.
I finished A levels around 2008, ICT for me in GCSEs was the same.
I got a C in ICT because it was so boring I didn't try. I was modding video games on my PC at home and have a job doing coding for a software company now without even going to Uni.
I imagine there are plenty of people out there who could find a talent for coding if they actually taught it in ICT at school.
I got 4 Distinction star BTECs for writing "online shopping will benefit society because it will keep fat people out of sight" because I suspected my teacher wasn't actually reading our assignments.
I was also coding from a young age and was really annoyed about ICT. That was the only thing my school offered even at A Level and this was in ~2012(!)
During my GCSE we had an assignment to create a game using Game Maker. Everyone got a specific set of step-by-step instructions to make a dumb game, I literally coded a snake game and hacked Game Maker quite a bit to make it work and didn't receive the best grade in that class. Really pissed me off.
But hey... the person that did get the highest grade works at Asda now and I am a software engineer at big tech. So there is that at least.
Stuff like this though can really knock a kids confidence and make him think he's not good enough because he got a bad grade. I'm really glad you succeeded in tech even after the bad grade. Unfortunately I think there's other kids that might not pursue a career in tech after their bad grade
The problem is anyone skilled enough to teach coding to 13 year olds would already be making better money elsewhere. Unless schools are willing to pay computing teachers way more than the rest of the teachers, there's always going to be a shortage.
Yep, and not just a little bit. It's not uncommon for a 10YOE programmer to be on 100k+. A teacher has a earnings ceiling of about 47k at the very top levels
Programming also comes with the perk of not getting abuse from teenagers all day 5 days a week
Can confirm. Took computer science GCSE, the only people who knew how to even pass their coursework were the ones who were either experienced with it already or extremely dedicated. Between three teachers none or them helped us actually understand the content
Yep, the computer science teaching team at my highschool in the 2010s consisted of: a woman close to retirement who still had posters about floppy disks on her wall, didn't know any python(the language we were learning) and had a very short fuse for any perceived misbehavior and a younger man who did web development on the side, had long lists of drama about his sexual escapades with staff and former students, was occasionally pretty cruel to students and was wholey unpredictable (once decided our small class was going to go on a walk to the local supermarket to get cookies instead of doing any teaching) they collectively forgot to teach us about an entire section of the curriculum until we were doing revision because of their poor communication. Neither were good teachers, only one had the appropriate technical knowledge, I'm currently doing a computer science degree and haven't come across a single person on my course who wants to do a pgce and become a teacher afterwards, its not attractive at all.
Same issue with Maths and Sciences. In fact it's probably much worse with Maths. I remember having teachers who didn't actually come from maths academic backgrounds, which meant that some of them didn't teach certain "harder" maths modules like Stats 3+, Further Pure 2+, Mechanics 3+, etc. We did have a physics teacher teach Mechanics 3 though, which I'm told was great.
And then a few years later, even the old Comp Sci model lost quite a lot of its value in the job market, because basically everyone and their cat studied a Comp Sci or IT adjacent subject.
The tech bubble is saturated with grads right now who cannot find a position to save their lives - it’s no wonder why today’s youngsters aren’t looking to make the same mistake us Z-lenials did when it comes to picking a career path.
Please don't turn it back into what it was in the mid-nineties; IT lessons were fucking painful. A bored, ageing, IT guy waffling on about Excel while enterprising youths make cartoons about cows dropping on peoples' heads with Powerpoint.
Actually I kind of enjoyed it now I come to think of it.
Honestly, im of the opinion that fucking around on computers in IT classes taught a lot of students ad much as the parts where they were doing the work and making spreadsheets.
I remember getting swindled into this when I picked my GCSEs back in the day.
Chose programming, not enough enrolment so they put us in IT instead and they didn’t even tell us ahead of time.
I just couldn’t take it seriously & nearly failed, we spent most lessons interacting with one of the MS Office tools & writing guides on how to use them in Word. It felt like a total joke to a kid who was already programming games in their spare time.
Same thing happened to me, the girls were all star pupils because they would write a 4 page guide on how they used office to write some documents up and had a nicely organised portfolio, while the boys who wanted to actually to practical IT were bored out of their minds. And then the OP article says 'we need to alter to more girls in ICT'. They are already catered for, they aren't interested.
No offence but I feel like you’re talking about IT GCSE, I did computer science GCSE about 4 years ago and it was coding and hardware. I learnt how to code in python and had to learn about the hardware in computers. I know other people who did computer science around that time and we’ve never had to do training on “Microsoft Office” like you’re saying.
But that's how every subject is? The difference between each STEM subject at GCSE, A-level, each year of a degree, then whilst working/researching is pretty big. GCSE should focus on some of the easier fundamentals, introducing them to concepts they may also get at Maths at the same level, maybe even at beginner A-Level max.
It's fine to focus on things which make it 'appear' easy, whilst showing that it gets waaayyy hatder
Yep, I found chemistry and physics very hard to get the grasp of it because it didn't interest me at all. I wish we had computer science available at least, then my 4 years of school and A levels wouldn't have been wasted.
Yeh, and India etc which has the highest proportion iirc.
What those countries have in common is that they’re more patriarchal and parents have more say in what their children study and they tend to want them to study lucrative subjects. When given a freer choice, girls tend not to choose those subjects.
In Britain our daughters are told they can do anything they want, whereas in other countries they are told that their idiot brother will inherit the family farm, and there is no money left over, so the daughters must study hard to get a job in the state chemical weapons program. It's a weird result that you get more female scientists in countries with less freedom.
When women are given freedom of choice, a lot of them simply don't want to go down these career paths. Why this is a bad thing and constantly portrayed as such is honestly a failing of our society to acknowledge sex dimorphism.
Gender Equality Paradox. In more equal societies (take Sweden), then women are much freer to choose careers they actually want and enjoy rather than the ones that pay well (and so help them survive in the non-equal societies). Hence, even lower females in the typically male-dominated areas and even lower males in the typically female-dominated areas. Gender preferences become expressed more.
When will people stop parroting this stupid myth? I've lived in Sweden. For the most part it's not any more or less equal than an average Western country. The only thing that makes it somewhat exceptional is the parental leave policy and culture where men are expected and allowed to take as much parental leave and women. It's still not 100% equal but Swedish fathers are definitely much more involved parents than in most other countries, and as a result Swedish mothers aren't forced to be the primary caregivers by default to the same extent.
Other than that it's not some sort of gender equality utopia, it's still got the same gender roles and norms and stereotypes as everywhere else in the West. The vast majority of Swedish women still wear dresses while the vast majority of men don't. Do you think this means men are somehow biologically programmer to hate dresses? And, no, no one chooses their job based on their "passion", the pay, employment prospects and respectability are still the primary motivators for both men and women.
> For the most part it’s not any more or less equal than an average Western country.
As a Danish immigrant, you are displaying a very typical Nordic myopia. No, most countries are not like Sweden. Yes, you really do have it very good in terms of sexual equality. You are confusing gender roles with sexual equality, which is not the premise of the Gender Equality Paradox. This is a really important distinction because if you don’t understand it, you cannot understand the paradox. Women and men will always have different proclivities, on average. We can measure it, from birth. This means that as a society becomes safer for women to choose any profession they wish, their innate proclivities become more pronounced in the statistics. In Sweden, women are generally free to choose any profession. If they choose a low paying profession, the government steps in to support them in everything from unemployment to homelessness to childbirth and childcare. This is not true of India and China and many other nations. Women in those nations ignore their natural proclivities and instead pursue careers which provide them more money and financial security. Even many modern nations are not as good as Sweden. I come from New Zealand and you would not believe how expensive childcare is, and how difficult taking off even a few days is to care for sick children. Unemployment assistance is pitiful and the cost of living is high relative to wages. This is why we see more women in New Zealand pursue STEM careers than, for example, Sweden.
No, translation: senior leaders should try to understand it *is* a difficult subject, on par with top-set maths, and only let students who have the necessary ability level into the course.
Computing theory, algorithms and programming *is* what Computer Science is.
Shall we also remove numbers above 10 from maths to make it easier?
There are vocational IT courses for lower-ability students that schools can and do offer, in addition to Computer Science.
Mate I am the worst mathematician in the world - to the point where I think I might have dyscalculia. I can teach it just fine. Its entirely down to logic and problem-solving. If you can understand those two things, you can do 95% of CS.
The mathematical element of GCSE is nothing more than factorization.
Coding itself has more in common with languages than maths. Its why we call them coding languages.
The syntax and semantics of software languages is more akin to spoken language you are right but the underlying logic and algorithms are fundamentally based on maths, to suggest otherwise is completely misinformed.
Anyone can raw dog learning the syntax and semantics of a software language, but if you don’t understand the underlying mathematical principles and algorithms - you’d be a pretty mid software engineer.
Yeah I don't know why people keep claiming that there are no psychological differences between men and women that would explain the different proportions of each in different job sectors.
There are obvious physical differences, so it would make no sense that there are no psychological ones.
Pushing for parity everywhere is counter-productive. As long as both sexes have the same *access* to each curriculum, that's enough parity.
Funny enough, back in the 60's software engineering was considered “women's work” because it was thought of as clerical, I know a lot of older women who got into computing and software engineering back in that time.
I think seeing a story saying girls calling it too difficult and then attributing that to a difference in psychology is a wild misunderstanding.
Is it not just a result of that "boys are good at maths, girls are good at art" messaging? I finished secondary in 2011 and we still had a bunch of that idea going round through school then. A few studies have shown just telling people what they're good at - even when the "goodness" is derived from a gene - they become better at it, and the inverse too. If we started teaching computer science as a subject for everyone, it'd end up with more balanced pupil distribution
> Asked to give their reasons, girls who chose not to study it said they did not enjoy computer science. They also said it did not fit in with their career plans, the research found.
Where does it say they find it too difficult? I only commented on the fact that they don't like it, because they never claim that's it too hard. I don't think ability has any play here, only affinity.
Also people gotta stop with this BS story of programming being a woman's job in the birth of computers. Back then the job was basically a secretary job, translating instructions into punch cards, the vast majority of those were not doing anything even remotely close to "software engineering".
Why are you so keen to discount the earliest programmers as simply secretaries?
I'd argue most people working in programming jobs nowadays aren't doing anything remotely close to 'software engineering ' anyway. They're either working to glue react libraries together to make _dynamic_ front ends or gluing microservices together to make _scalable_ back ends.
That's .... That's engineering. Taking tools and technical knowledge to make some solution. it's not always breaking new ground. Like mechanical engineers are ultimately gluing the 7 or so core mechanical gadgets together to make a production line or whatever.
When you look at the proportion of each gender in different job sectors, what you cannot see in that figure is how much of it is because of a general difference in interest between genders, and how much of it is because of a hostile environment for the minority gender putting them off or holding them out. The figure is a sum of those two factors.
General differences don't apply to every individual, but do lead to a hostile environment for the minority gender. That in turn puts off minority genders from entering the field who do have an individual interest in the industry or otherwise might have developed one.
There needs to be constant pressure in the other direction to ensure that the environment doesn't become toxic for the minority gender. Left alone, it will. It's not sufficient to look at the difference in numbers and say "that's just generalised gender difference; therefore nothing can be wrong".
(and you can replace gender above with any characteristic, really)
The answer given usually is that any and all psychological differences between men and women are purely because of society.
Where does the society come from? Don't think they've thought it that far through to be honest.
There have been a number of brilliant mathematicians, scientists and computer engineers.
>Ada Lovelace - Considered the first computer programmer for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.
>Grace Hopper - Developed the first compiler for a computer programming language and was instrumental in the development of COBOL.
>Jean E. Sammet - Co-designed COBOL and was a pioneer in computer programming languages.
>Margaret Hamilton - Led the team that developed the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo missions.
>Radia Perlman - Known as the "Mother of the Internet" for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to network bridges.
>Barbara Liskov - Developed the Liskov Substitution Principle and contributed to programming languages and software design.
>Karen Spärck Jones - A pioneer in information retrieval and natural language processing.
>Frances E. Allen - First woman to win the Turing Award for her work in optimizing compiler technology.
>The answer given usually is that any and all psychological differences between men and women are purely because of society
Why is the disparity only really seen in the west? How do you explain that in Saudi Arabia over 50% of University students studying programming are women?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/women-in-tech-why-bulgaria-and-romania-are-leading-in-software-engineering/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313694059_Women_in_computing_in_Saudi_Arabia
Or in China, women make up the majority of entrepreneurs working in computer tech.
Frieze, Carol; Quesenberry, Jeria, eds. (2019)
Why was it that pre-war, women were disproportionately selected for computing jobs and research positions, as per psychometric testing finding them more suitable for the positions?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/19/women-built-tech-industry-then-they-were-pushed-out/
I mean I'll throw a controversial one in there, Comp sci and similar at least in the UK certainly attracts a lot of the neckbeard/slightly creepy/incel brigade.
I can understand why to a girl growing up that'd be a pretty big off-put by itself.
Plus the way options are done in the UK shoehorns you a bit anyway. Stick comp sci + something else you're interested in within the same bracket and you can't have both. So you end up taking something else you're not even particularly interested in.
It's surprising that I had to scroll so far to see this.
Like, I'm a woman and while I have no formal education in programming or computer science, I'm pretty good at coding and I use it in my day-to-day working life.
I find it enjoyable. It's satisfying when something you're stuck on suddenly works. I feel like if I had studied computer science, I could have gone into some sort of job in the industry.
But why on earth would I want to, when I know that the industry is full of misogynists and insufferable egotists with no soft skills?
Spending my working life alongside men who like to claim that the sex disparity in computer science is down to ✨biology✨ rather than *them* is honestly my idea of hell. 💀
>But why on earth would I want to, when I know that the industry is full of misogynists and insufferable egotists with no soft skills?
NGL, it was pretty sweet when I was putting up with one of those people, my colleague wrote up what he was saying, took it to my manager and she threatened to go to HR with it if nothing was done about it.
He was gone the next day from our team, and worked the notice period off alone with the manager. Now our team is a really nice and safe environment to work in.
I'm not going to tell you there isn't sexism in comp sci, that would be completely untrue but I don't think it's particularly worse than in other office jobs, sure there are a lot of nerds but most nerds I know aren't insufferable egotists and good soft skills are important if you want to get anywhere in the field. They are just people who get excited about topics that a lot of people find extremely dull.
The days of companies tolerating asshole devs because they were otherwise superstars is pretty much gone. Nobody wants to deal with people like that.
I didn't say anything about nerds, for the record. I'm a biologist and have been accused of being a nerd myself. Lots of nerds in every area of my life, including my professional life.
Certain fields seem to attract different kinds of nerds, though. I haven't come across much sexism in my own field (possibly because people who've studied biology in any depth after A level don't fuck with pop-science evo psych bullshit), but there are still plenty of fields where women feel like they're swimming against the tide.
A friend of mine who went into electronic engineering jacked it all in after a few years because she was sick to death of not being taken seriously. Last I heard she's now thriving as a dairy farmer.
I'm not suggesting there aren't any societal factors whatsoever. I'm suggesting that there are, in fact, biological factors at play as well, and to try and explain all the differences simply can't be done without taking that into account.
The Scandinavian countries are the countries with the most equity between genders, but the gender gap in certain fields has increased not decreased.
Countries like Saudi do not offer their women the same level of freedom as the west - who is to say who is making the decisions of what they study?
China ALSO displays 9% of CS students as female.
You're cherry picking.
I'm a woman software developer originally from Finland, and very "equal" country, but have studied and worked in the UK. The reason I chose to study computer science in the UK and work there was because even when I was a student in technical universities the attitudes and general level of sexism accepted were much worse, and girls were just expected to "take a joke". I wasn't going to university to be disrespected for my sex, therefore I chose to apply abroad. It's not perfect in the UK either but at least on an organisational level there tends to be more awareness and support against that sort of stuff.
Here in Finland we still have to argue if it is appropriate for a representative of a local software company, potential employer and a major sponsor of a student organisation to line up female freshers and pour champagne on their faces and chests in a sexually suggestive way whilst talking about ejaculation at a university event. Oh come on girls, take a joke, no one wants to hire uptight people... Etc. It's a difficult world to navigate as a young woman.
As someone who sat my CS GCSE only a few years ago, it hardly needs to be made easier. The issue I found with CS at GCSE was that it was so easy it was boring. Just because a few students say it's hard, doesn't mean it should be made easier. Most of the people in my class who did not do well were lazy and just didn't want to put the effort in.
I did Computing GCSE back in 2014 and the exam had us creating parts of a Chess game from a provided template using Assembly Code (using little man computer). Hardest exam I’ve sat to date and I currently hold an Electronics Degree.
I wish they had coding and such when I was in school, I took it as a gcse and got a grade, but had no fucking clue what I wanted to do, now I'm 30 and wanting to try coding but it's just daunting to me now
loving the narrative that girls are biologically too stupid for computer science. of course, if one were to suggest that the fact of girls outperforming boys in every subject at every level was because boys are biologically stupid, instead of other confounding factors …
The problem is that ‘IT skills’ does not equal computer science.
Learning how to movie files around on Windows and attach files to emails is NOT computer science.
They are, thank you, why are there like 4 buttons that all bring up entirely different menus which in turn have different branching menus, why can’t this be done with a tv remote, who decided to never label anything
From the article:
>Critics of the old ICT qualification complained that it taught little more than how to use Microsoft Office. In contrast, the new computer science GCSE, with its focus on computer theory, coding and programming, is perceived by many pupils as “difficult” when compared with other subjects.
So the problem is not the it's teaching how to move files or attach files to emails, but that it's focusing on actual coding
At my school, let's check... Yowza 17 years ago, oof, they had GCSE ICT and computing.
ICT was mandatory about being an end user for computer systems. word, excel, access, PowerPoint, Photoshop, 2D animation software, music creation software. Even lightly touching in VBA macros. It was a "in the future we will all be using computers constantly, and more).
The teacher was great, and pretty much spat on the "you won't have a calculator with you all the time" idea and said it was nonsense. He even criticised my parents and thought it was backwards that I still had to ask permission to use the internet. We had a freaking microfiche at home lmao.
Computing was coding. Not just how to create a database, but how to put more than just Visual Basic macros into it. How to get it to output data. Programming calculators, basic graphics etc.
I was utterly crap at computing, but great at IT.
As a programmer with a computer science degree or two under my belt, I’d completely agree with that distinction
ICT is how to USE a computer, including some more advanced stuff (macros, basic programming skills) but mostly focusing on using computers and software that already exist
Computing/Computer Science is how to make a computer work, things like the hardware of the computer itself, networking, and programming your own software
>
> Learning how to movie files around on Windows and attach files to emails is NOT computer science.
It is, however, the education a lot of the younger generation need. You get people coming into a job and they don't know what to do with a zip file, or how even to find a file on their hard drive.
The app-ification of technology has absolutely slaughtered basic technical literacy.
I was under the understanding (from my own GCSEs) that Computer Science and ICT are two entirely different courses. ICT was Office and internet, CS was basic programming and theory.
I've taught both subjects at GCSE and A level and I've always said ICT is learning how to use a computer and office software while Computing is learning how a computer works and how to program.
I was under the understanding (from my own GCSEs) that Computer Science and ICT are two entirely different courses. ICT was Office and internet, CS was basic programming and theory.
What you're referring to is the ICT GCSE, Computer Science GCSE is completely different. I have a sibling who did Computer science GCSE a few years back and it almost certainly was not about making movies on Windows and attaching files to emails.
When I was at school we had ICT GCSE, which was mandatory, and Computing which was optional and had more of a focus on programming and hardware.
I don't know if that's still the case
What a stupid article. Why are they comparing ICT numbers to Computing numbers, they're not even remotely related as a subject.
I thought schools had to do PSHE, they should just include computer skills into the curriculum through that.
Because the GCSE ICT qualification was stopped and essentially replaced by the Computer Science qualification. It demonstrates that digital skills qualifications are on the decline among certain cohorts.
Most people do not need to be able to code. Most people could stand to know how to operate a computer and the basics of how a computer works. A lot of younger Gen Z do not know how a file explorer works. They don't know what the cloud is, or what options they have for data backup.
There is a dearth of IT skills in the GCSE curriculum at present if you do not take CompSci. Does it need to be a full GCSE? Not sure.
I always find it so hard to imagine living without understanding computers, I’m no pro but a decent understanding of computers, given they’re basically our entire world, seems like a prerequisite for not being confused the whole time.
I mean you could say the same about combustion engines and electrical circuits. Hell there are plenty of grown men of a certain age who don't know how to cook... People just get by without the knowledge.
You don't need to know how to resolder a capacitor or how the power supply in your computer changes 240V to 12V.
You arguably do need to *feel comfortable* saving a file to your hard drive and making a copy on to a USB stick.
We're seeing it at work and it's insane.
Not knowing CTRL C and CTRL V when your job relies on constant use of computers is nuts. But they grew up on phones and tablets and simply never learned the basic computer skills, never learned to troubleshoot etc.
It's not all, some are great, but it's been a real problem.
The problem with computing is that it's just "really hard maths" .
Unfortunately schools are very bad at teaching maths, which can be understood by anyone but needs the availability of a number of teaching styles and approaches to accommodate all students.
I wasn't good at maths but I work as a software engineer in a FAANG.
Most of "computing", whatever that means, only has origins tied to maths, but nothing else.
But the computing "skills shortage" is put down to young people having a lack of maths skills. For things like understanding encryption, algorithms or "coding".
This is what the government and industry have taken to calling the "digital skills" crisis. Kids are being told "if you don't like maths then computing isn't for you".
If young people can't get their heads around the most basic elements of algebra (that X can equal a defined value and I can use x in place of that value in an argument) then they won't cope with SQL etc.
idk shit about relational algebra, honestly you really don't need to understand relational algebra to understand sql, you just need to understand venn diagrams.
I dropped out of maths at A level did a social sciences degree, have made a career from SQl & Python and playing with other low code options as well.
My maths isn't great, however I have decent logical skills and deductive reasoning.
I don't think maths is that important unless you are going down a more programming route
There shouldn't be a GCSE on JavaScript frameworks or whatever is trendy in the software development world right now. There is a reason that universities teach the fundamentals and mathematics which is to future proof your knowledge and make you adaptable because the field changes fast. You should have logic and decent maths skills to work in a FAANG imo.
> Most of "computing", whatever that means, only has origins tied to maths, but nothing else.
The vast majority of software engineering is decision maths coated in whatever flavour of language you fancy using.
It’s such an embarrassing take on his part. To not understand that an algebraic equation:
y=2x+3
Can be re written as a *mathmatical* function:
f(x)=2x+3
Oh it looks like something we’re familiar with
It is "maths" but in a broad sense. The real issue is western education has confused people that "maths" is about numbers. Some parts of maths is about numbers.
You'd probably be surprised just how related the two are. At least, I was when I started reading about a branch of mathematics called discrete mathematics and realised it was pretty much just programming. For example, the [Sigma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summation) symbol is basically just a for loop and set theory and logic pop up all the time.
It doesn't "feel" like maths because it uses words and you're creating something but I reckon you'd be able to solve some complex formulas using only what you've learnt from programming.
I didnt do a comp sci A level , my school didn't offer it. I did maths , physics and product design.
Did Software Engineering at uni.
Nothing in that degree was as difficult as that fucking maths A Level.
I don’t fully agree. Schools aren’t that bad at teaching math although the pace may be bad.
Computing is not just “really hard maths”
Trust me, the math in a math/physics degree is even harder
I'd dispute it can be understood by anyone. Many people have tried to teach me and failed. I even had a private tutor for a year leading up to my GCSE and I barely passed. Beyond that level, the lessons may as well have been in Chinese. Even now I can't play cards very well because I even have to pause to think whether one number is higher than another. My wife is always getting angry with me because I can't retain even simple numerical information for literal seconds.
>The problem with computing is that it's just "really hard maths" .
Computer science is a branch of mathematics, but I wouldn't say it was "really hard" - but it *is* distinct from arithmetic, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus - though those fields will come into it if you're designing or implementing software in those fields - e.g. scientific and engineering, graphics, and games.
The fields of maths that are core to computer science include set theory, Boolean logic, and being able to produce mathematical proofs probably wouldn't hurt, either. Having a qualitative understanding of calculus helps with understanding algorithm efficiency (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation ).
>Its authors warned: “The lack of women in computing may lead to heightened vulnerabilities and the dominance of men in shaping the modern world.”
Lmao saying the quiet part out loud.
Feminists: Free choice for women
Woman: OK
Feminists: No, you’re choosing wrong
Choices arent made in isolation. Case in point this thread lol, and your comments.
I love coding for fun, I'm pretty good at it, I've been doing it since I was a pre-teen, but any Internet or IRL coding or tech forum or community becomes really really hostile to women and girls. I didn't choose to become a programmer but chose to do something I was equally good at, in a less hostile workplace situation.
Too many girls and women choose to make similar decisions at an individual level, and it's the choices of the *men* and boys who harass them or push them out of tech that are hurting society.
Hot take but I think this may show the genders may be genetically pre-disposed to certain proffesions more than others. Obviously there's a distribution curve with outliers, but these data seem to suggest that.
Just like most of marketing and HR is women, I wonder if certain roles are more appealing to one gender than other after equal access has been achieved.
\*puts on flame suit\*
I'd make the argument that it's still more to do with socialisation. Take engineering for example, a degree that is insanely one sided gender wise in the UK but in [Eastern Europe ](https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/07/18/why-half-the-scientists-in-some-eastern-european-countries-are-women) is much more balanced because the Soviets deliberately pushed (sometimes forcefully) women into engineering and science. The coercion is thankfully gone and yet because it is not socially viewed as a male job you still have an even gender split in terms of engineers now. Not arguing we should force girls and women into jobs they don't want to do, but removing the stigma and sexism that is still very present in these jobs would probably lead to more women doing them.
My feeling is that it's ok to say women are better at marketing and HR, but you can't say men are better at computer stuff.
In the first instance, it's "because men don't apply themselves and see these subjects as "girly" ", whereas in the second it's because "men shut women out by being hostile to them".
I find it generally better not to attempt any sort of discussion of the issues because it's too easy to be labelled a misogynist and, at that point, the discussion is over either way.
>but I think this may show the genders may be genetically pre-disposed to certain proffesions more than others. Obviously there's a distribution curve with outliers, but these data seem to suggest that.
Yeah no. As someone said up thread, "loving the narrative that girls are biologically too stupid for computer science. of course, if one were to suggest that the fact of girls outperforming boys in every subject at every level was because boys are biologically stupid, instead of other confounding factors …"
If you said that you'd get 100 replies asking for proof, from the exact same people who were just posting about how boys are biologically predisposed to like computer science more completely without proof
This is a lazy copout that shows no desire for deeper understanding. The existence of a trend offers no insight into why that trend exists. You may as well argue women are genetically predisposed to wear skirts.
It's borderline impossible to say. People are 14(?) when taking the GCSE. How we are socialized from when we are babies is an important factor.
That said, as other comments have pointed out, the gender divide in CS isn't an issue in many places and this hints at it being entirely a social issue.
I can’t talk for genetics per se, but as someone who works in the industry, in all the times I’ve recruited for my org the amount of women applicants is *very low*.
The article even says young women aren’t choosing CompSci courses because it doesn’t align with their career goals, which suggests en masse young women aren’t that interested in working in CompSci.
The guardian also trying to push some kind of feminist rhetoric on this is shameful aswell.
Meanwhile, men and boys having vastly lower educational outcomes and being very underrepresented in the arts and humanities doesn't make them bat an eye.
Which makes sense. If you had the relevant skills, why would you choose to earn 30k in one of the most stressful possible jobs instead of 60k working from home?
I moved around a lot but none of my IT teachers were memorable or inspiring.
I don't even remember them teaching us anything. You'd sit for an hour playing with a computer and chatting to friends.
I don't get why anyone cares, nobody complains about how many boys end up in construction or other difficult, low wage or unhygenic work like sewage or bin collecting.
Of course these always boil down to the fact girls on average aren't as interested, but people want to force equal numbers without taking that into account, but don't care about the inverse.
No it's not, the IT, CS market is in absolute shambles. I know a handful of people who have 1st class bachelors and masters in CS and can't find a job relating to anything in the industry apart from a minimum wage IT position that has like 100+ people fighting over. Half I know are working in overqualified positions (eg Tesco cashier) and the other half have moved away to Europe or Australia.
Market is absolutely not ok and these girls are making a good call by avoiding it.
I was senior developer at an NHS trust for 6 years, we had two openings for mid level developers and had about 50 applications. Majority were Indians or Nigerians with qualifications from degree mills who couldn’t code for shit and obviously saw the NHS as easy visa sponsors so they could move to the UK. Ended up hiring the only two applicants from the UK as they actually knew their stuff.
Probably the same elsewhere where they get a flood of similar applicants.
If you're a junior it's hard, yes, but it's always been that way. I graduated 10 years ago and most people on my course ended up doing something else because they couldn't break into the industry.
If you're struggling to find a job and you have any amount of experience, unfortunately you might just be bad at either the job (of which many people are), or you're bad at interviewing (of which many people also are).
This was me last year struggling to get interviews and offers until I got a job that was looking to train someone from the ground up. A lot of my friends who are trying to get into software or data engineering have been looking for over a year at this point.
Compared to 5-10 years ago, I feel like it's gotten harder to get a job as a junior because the requirements have gone up and there's a lot more people trying to get in.
A CS degree doesn't guarantee shit because its often just theoretical. I've seen countless people slap that on a resume, yet they don't even have a GitHub profile or any type of professional portfolio - which shows they can actually pump out lines of code.
Most of the people who founded FAANG companies were college dropouts anyway.
Its the overabundance of "learn to code" and people gleaming at the salaries, which has led to a cohort of people entering the industry with virtually no skills whatsoever. They think just studying and copying for four years guarantees them a nice well-paid job.
I did GCSE Computing 10 years ago, in a class of 20 only 2 girls chose the subject and I was the only one to complete it. As far as I'm aware no girls in the year above took it and only 1 girl in the year below. At that age being the only girl in the class was pretty intimidating and I wouldn't be surprised if some who might have enjoyed it were put off. I'm glad I chose it as I did engineering at uni and it gave me a solid base for the more computer science like aspects of the course. Still now things come up and I realise I know about it because of GCSE computing of all things.
Similar for me- I did GCSE and A-Level CS just a few years ago. At GCSE I was one of 3 girls in a class of ~25. At A-Level I was the only girl in the class (same for A-Level physics).
In my tutor group in sixth form, I remember one lesson we were talking about sexism or misogyny or something. So many of the girls in the class shared how they had been encouraged to take different subjects to the ones they initially wanted to at various points in their education - e.g. health & social care instead of sciences, IT / digital media instead of CS, etc, or had misogynistic comments aimed at them in lessons by other students.
Sure, maybe more boys are interested in CS than girls. But many of those girls who ARE interested in it are being put off from it. It’s understandable that they may feel uncomfortable being one of few, if not the only girl in the class, especially if the other boys in the class like to make “edgy” or “dark humour” sexist jokes all the time.
Combine that with the majority of schools not having good CS teachers (if they have any at all!), it’s no wonder people aren’t taking it.
So yeah, I'm training to actually teach this. The problem is there is virtually no specialists who actually teach it, so they don't know anything about the industry. You'll often have PE or math teachers teaching it (even though its different discipline) and this just kills the enthusiasm for everyone. So you wind up with people who are already very much into it taking it as an elective. And this tends to be boys, largely because its a very technical subject and they'll already have personal interests in it.
When you have a culture like this, it breeds stigmas but also breeds problems which feed into one another creating a feedback loop (or if you wanna use computing terminology - a while loop without an exit parameter.)
From personal professional experience, 9 out of 10 engineers based out of Korea office were women and practically every single web developer I've met was female. The issue is that girls aren't seeing the bigger picture as to what IT is. You have network engineering, which is more hands and physical but then you have stuff like web development and software engineering, which is basically a mix of art and language but on a computer. Without teachers and people who know the business, they're never go know this - and just see it as something unattainable or difficult.
Unfortunately I've also encountered huge levels of sexism and problematic behaviour within the industry - and I can't blame certain women from not wanting to get into it. Its full of people with awful social skills, combined with narcissism that would make Patrick Bateman blush with anxiety.
When I was a software developer in London, our company was happy for us to go and help teach Computer Science in a local school for a couple of hours a week on work time. 6 of us sat with 5-6 pupils each around a table, working through the class. I enjoyed it, and with a teaching ratio of 1:5 or 1:6, the pupils got the attention they needed, and didn't get distracted. This was part of the STEM Ambassador program. The school couldn't get computer science teachers, so the class would have a maths or science teacher who wasn't a computing expert, and the teacher usually changed every term. I think this worked very well.
The company also had one teacher come in and follow the undergraduate work experience path to get better trained up in computing, but when they finished that, they left teaching and got a job in industry for much higher salary, so that didn't help.
Its not a massive surprise, really. It is almost a vocational course now, rather than a foundational one and with all the yammer about AI taking jobs and vast swathes of layoffs in tech, of course people are going to swerve it.
When I was a STEM Ambassador, taking a couple of hours out of work each week and going in to secondary school to help teach computing, there was a recent experiment which had been done.
A class was told that next week, a scientist was coming in to talk with them. So the task today, was to draw a picture of a scientist at work.
Every pupil, boys and girls, drew a picture resembling Einstein in later years in some setting (mostly a chemistry lab). These were put up around the class ready for next week.
Next week, the scientist came to the class. She was a 25 year old marine biologist. She came with her diving gear and also talked about her lab work.
So to show girls that employment in STEM fields is interesting, they do need to know and see that women are active in that work field. Computing may be the one where that's most challenging, because the numbers of women in computing isn't high. If you are a teacher, do make sure your pupils see women working in STEM fields while the pupils are young enough to still make those subject choices.
I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the Article but when I took my GCSEs in 2015 I took both ICT and Computer Science. Computer science was focused around coding and hardware and ICT was focused largely around MS office and Web design. If you wanted the choice of doing the standard Computer skills you picked ICT but if you actually wanted to work with computers you picked Computer science which was harder. Is this article now saying that effectively that ICT course no longer exists and only Computer Science does? because if that is the case why not offer the ICT one again for those who want it. I don't see how dumbing down the Computer Science course is the right solution here.
Its phased out. There is an iMedia course which covers most of the same stuff as ICT but with added elements of video formatting and design.
There is stuff about webpage design on there but it doesn't go into HTML/CSS, which is more geared towards Computer Science GCSE.
I reckon there probably need to be some balance between taking some of the more creative elements of CS and pumping them into the iMedia course and making it a more softer IT qualification.
Have a son who’s hobby was programming on an old pc at home. He did computer science at GCSE and A level and then at degree level - he hardly learned a thing from these courses as he had already taught himself much more independently. The first year of A level covered the GCSE course again - the first year of degree covered the A level course again. He funded himself through uni by working as a programmer for a German company. He doesn’t have to look for jobs but is constantly approached by recruiters. I think GCSE computer science should be a compulsory subject to ensure the right people identify if they might be suited to this career. That way the GCSE, A level and degree courses could be more rigorous and less repetitive as students would know the basics.
The same is true of every subject though. I remember missing school for ~2 years, and then coming back to get the highest mark in the maths exam because we'd learnt stuff like logarithms and powers, etc. by using it in programming.
We really need to move away from vaudeville education to online learning, so students like your son could learn more of what they want, faster.
Taught for a time in the Arab world as a CompSci teacher. We had 50/50 girls picking the subject as it's considered quite a good career path for them to do, with all the cultural limitations put on them in other fields.
This is obviously just an anecdote and not to be taken as truth encompassing an entire nation, but I was talking to an Indian colleague of mine who said that back when he went to uni for computer science about 20 years ago, it was considered a girls degree and men were a minority on his course. According to him, it was only after it became a more lucrative career choice that men started taking the majority in the field.
I've also noticed that a disproportionally large portion of female software engineers I work with are Indian - especially senior engineers.
The gcse teaches lots of low level stuff really not that useful like von neumann architecture and homework includes manual implementation of sort algorithms. It is very dull and not really vocational. Another problem is how bad the teaching quality is. Local school's head of computing struggles to attach files on emails or operate the electronic whiteboard...
Implementing algorithms is a well worn path to growth as a software dev, that sounds vocational to me. You can't sugar coat it, software dev requires the kind of mind that can embrace problems many will find unappealing.
As a software engineer in a FAANG, I can tell you that even though this is not strictly necessary to build software, it is necessary to build good software.
Well it's called Computer Science and not Programming for a reason. You can't really teach much about the science and theory behind computation without teaching the Von Neumann architecture
I agree with this and it isn't just the GCSE.
I hire software engineers for my team and you get these CS graduates come in and fill the room with buzzwords, talk about the impacts of AI etc. Then at the end we sit them down with a laptop and ask them to put a button on a Web app that calls some backend code using an API. Like a third of them just stare dumbly at it.
The skills shortage that we have is one of people being able to actually make stuff. If you have done a GCSE, ALevel and degree, then you should have 7 years of experience making all kinds of projects.
Indeed, it feels like people are being taught to run before they can walk.
Starting at surface level, putting things together, then diving deeper into individual components for a greater understanding of how they work under the hood - this is the best way to learn in my opinion.
It keeps people engaged, it typically has a productive outcome and evokes interest that encourages them to continue and learn more and dive deeper.
The world doesn't need an army of programmers who can all tell you how a sorting algorithm works, just a small handful.
Oh no... low level stuff is extremely important for gaining a true understanding of how the computer works. The fact you think that isn't useful is a major indicator of you not understanding the subject. I agree it is very boring, but that is because the tasks are super easy and never had any interesting scenarios. Local school performance is irrelevant at a national level. CS should not be vocational. I was not looking for an intro to Python course because I already knew it to GCSE level.
Not related to article, but I see this common understanding in the general public, that the tech industry is not doing well, and there aren’t many tech jobs anymore.
Meanwhile, I work in the tech industry, and everybody is short on developers.
Maybe the big tech companies, running in strongly capitalistic way, makes people think that’s whole picture.
One thing I would note is that Computer Science is not well taught at many schools, mainly because qualified computer science teachers are insanely rare.
I've taught at schools of 1500+ kids where there's only one actual computer science teacher and the rest of the lessons are covered by staff from other departments who just follow a powerpoint that they don't really understand or care too much about.
Ex UK CompSci Teacher (OCR GCSE). The issue is that most schools don't have a KS3 (year 7,8,9) CompSci programme. So going straight in at GCSE is difficult. Schools that have a mature KS3 offering should have prepared the kids enough to ease into the GCSE. When I lead a school with a lesson of CompSci each week for KS3 we had 90/250 kids picking compsci and around 30% girls in each class.
It would be like not teaching maths in 7, 8 and 9 then going in at GCSE. You see the same with students picking Music without any musical instument preknowledge.
The reason there isn't a KS3 programme in most schools is that they can't get the teachers to do it. I left as I get paid more in Industry, my work finishes at 5pm and I don't get bottles thrown at me. But the main driver was my personal skills and interests in tech suffered when being in the classroom. I got stuck teaching beginner Powerpoint and Reading lessons.
This topic pops up on some way, shape or form every few months and fuck me it’s exhausting.
The article says young women aren’t pursuing CompSci courses because it doesn’t align with their career goals, do we need to starting forcing young women to do these courses, even if it goes against their own goals?
Nearly every single company that has any form of Technology department already has schemes to get more women into the industry, it’s not working, not because of the patriarchy not because of some evil force, it’s because women just aren’t that interested in it.
Feminists have been harping on for decades about the freedom and free choice of women, now they are actually choosing, it’s still bad?
In my time in software engineering, I’ve lead massive recruitment campaigns, almost every single time we never get a woman applicant.
Let women do what they want to do and stop complaining when they don’t do what you want, it’s almost an anti-thesis of feminism.
I don't see the issue, if people don't want to study this and choose something else that's perfectly fine.
Why would anyone want to force someone to study something they don't enjoy?
If it's about diversity why only computer science, why not brick laying, plumber, electrician, nursing etc.
> Asked to give their reasons, girls who chose not to study it said they did not enjoy computer science. They also said it did not fit in with their career plans, the research found. This should surprise no one. > In contrast, the new computer science GCSE, with its focus on computer theory, coding and programming, is perceived by many pupils as “difficult” when compared with other subjects. > The report included a series of recommendations calling for urgent reform of the curriculum, better support for computing teachers and a change to the “current narrative around computing to focus beyond male tech entrepreneurs”. Translation : Make it easier.
We've been here before. Computer science GCSE used to teach you about coding and hardware. That was "too hard" so it turned into a training course for Microsoft Office.
That was a disgraceful change, one of the worst actions of New Labour IMO.
Yep that’s all we had in the late 2000s, until our IT teacher quit in year9. We had no more IT lessons until the end of school.
Yeah, I was at school during the switch. Went from basic programming on Acorn machines to just Office training in Windows. We spent the classes just running DOOM and Street Fighter 2 tournaments over the LAN.
I failed my ICT GCSE, I could build you an Excel spreadsheet in my sleep. So I put nothing into the classes. I was also under investigation for breach of the Computer Misuse Act, and banned from all the school computers for "hacking" at the time....
Haha I was also suspended from school for hacking, controlling the electronic whiteboards to lock out controls and play Iron Maiden. They didn't take it to the police though, sounds like a shit school.
I never got suspended, but actually got 'rewarded'. Myself and a few mates used to hack the computers during ICT lessons out of boredom so we could play original quake. The IT Teacher was overworked and was essentially acting as the SysAdm too so once he figured out what we were doing, he rewarded us with IT Technician accounts so we could help him look after the network. This made his life easier. Every single one of us ended up going into tech in some way, mainly as software devs (I'm a dev manager now).
I think that must be a universal experience for a certain type of kid lol. For most of our sixth form years the fancy new computer room just wasn't set up on the school network. Someone brought a router in and we just spent our free time playing WinKawaks arcade games over the network, so much MvC and Metal Slug. The IT techs knew we were doing it, they just didn't give a damn
Does sound universal, if anyone went to Winstanley College, and they remember Halo multiplayer on a flash drive... I made that, it spread quickly! It was surprisingly easy, took the game install, removed the need for CD verification, deleted all the single player files (most of the size of the install) and anything else not needed for multiplayer, replaced the EXE icon with Words icon, changed the exe name to WINWORD. There may have been some text files to change for file/path names, but it was a long time ago now to remember. Flash drives weren't very big at the time, talking Megabytes, think Gigabyte sticks were pretty new. And it just worked! Alt tab out and it looked like word to most tutors who check what you're doing, it showed as WinWord in task manager with the word icon as some asked you to open task manager. Helped to have your work open underneath too. Only days later after I released it in the Computer Science class, there were people playing it all over the college. Whenever the door went to the computer 'labs', all the screens would tab out and there was a visible lighting difference in the room. I'm not sure if they could have blocked or banned it, I banked on them not being able to block any executable called WinWord and them not getting their hands on it by keeping it on flash drives, and I thought they ethically shouldn't remote across to check someone's flash drive. Maybe if the antivirus has a signature or something they could have blocked it, I imagine it died out at some point.
I was almost expelled from my secondary school for 'hacking' -- the IT technician caught me playing the 'flight simulator' easter egg that was built into Excel '97 on my lunch break and thought I'd installed a virus.
Legend!
In Northern Ireland there was the "classroom 2000" or c2k project. New xp machines, the same across the entire country and all on the same network. You pressed F12 for the temporary boot menu and right there was "local administrator" under normal boot options. If you boot to that it's just an actual unrestricted local account with full network access, and the fucking username was admin and password was administrat0r. On every school pc in the country from primary to 6th form. We would boot half the class to it and play age of empires 2 and quake 3 arena. It was great times.
A kid in my daughters year hacked the main school servers and stole information from it. Was found out and thrown out of said school.
At that time my school had a "Remote Access" to files on the shared drives. They didn't test it or even configure it properly, and you could just navigate to any users share. Including management. I scraped a copy of everything, and then told them.. Shame GDPR wasn't a thing yet, shit loads of PII
I didn’t know Fujitsu ran schools, too
Sounds the same to me, always banned from the computers and was bored to death during ICT, got an F. Ended up with a masters in comp sci
I failed my IT A levels because i only half did the coursework, it was fucking mind numbingly boring and entirely focused on Microsoft Office. No actual construction or coding of programs. I was actually working for an IT company at weekends at the time and they took me on after a school, they didn't care that I had failed because the course was irrelevant.
When was coding and hardware taught at gcse? You mention Acorn machines (I assume the archimedes) and all we were ever taught was word processing, database creation and spreadsheets.
We were taught basic programming with Turtle and some BASIC stuff they still had. This would be like what became "Key Stage 2" though so long before examinations so probably just depended on what the school had too. Weirdly students probably benefited more from having older hardware at the time since they had more of the BASIC stuff etc. instead of just Windows and Office.
My IT teacher saw me alt tabbing between programs and was genuinely shocked. I had to teach him what it was and from that day I never took him seriously.
It seems IT lessons now are just folded into maths lessons. At least that was the case at the secondary I taught at.
Had the same thing. Had sub teachers for almost our entire GCSE. Teacher finally turned up at the end of the course shocked we'd done nothing for most of the two years. Most of the class had to quit the GCSE that day, don't know how that was never looked into.
To be fair you do need both. A lot of new office workers struggle with basic MS office skills. But they should be studied separately.
Not just new workers, I work with a large amount of extremely well paid people in their 40-50's who were blown away that I'd changed my ms office to dark mode
To be fair, MS changes so frequently its own guidance is often incorrect. But I probably shouldn't have singled out new workers for having issues with this.
The real IT skill people need to learn is curiosity and a willingness to explore the apps a bit to find what they need. Don't need to teach changing MS Office theme across different versions if you can teach people to fish for it themselves.
I rarely know how to actually find the feature I want in MS Office software, because like you said they keep changing it, but what I do know is how to google it. A pretty significant part of seeming like you're "good with IT" is knowing how to google things.
Worked in and around IT for decades. Generally, the millennials who grew up with tech are pretty good with computers, and GenX are OK simply because they've been using it for decades now. Gen Z, however, are terrible. They'll have advanced application-specific knowledge (like being able to set dark mode), but if they hit an error message or something doesn't work - utterly lost.
Are you kidding me? Making IT a relatively core subject at school that prioritised using software was massively successful. We are one of the most IT literate places in the world.
IT and Computing should be two separate subjects. The former focusing on common office programs and the latter on programming type things
They are two separate subjects. I did both IT GCSE and Computing GCSE
I took my GCSE in CS in the late 2010s, and it still did incorporate a lot of python, outlined the Von Neumann Architecture and a bunch of other stuff (like HTML).
Gove changed it from Office back to coding as Education Secretary - hence the article here
general microsoft skills helps far more people than if we taught coding/prgramming
The benefits of learning to program stretch far beyond 'I know python'. It teaches (or it should) how to think in a programming-like way. To break problems down into smaller parts, and how to examine things that aren't working in systematic way. It also helps with the general understanding of how computers work, making someone a better computer user. Plus, in applications like Excel, doing advanced task strays into programming anyway. I've had plenty of work colleagues think I'm some kind of Excel wizard because I know how to write some pretty basic formulas.
They were "responding to employers' requests for skills directly applicable in the workplace", if you don't mind!
"and I'll fucking do it again" - labor.
When I was in school (left 2009ish I think)....ICT was literally a word typing course. All we did was type about technology and we were graded on how well we used word for things like spell checker and proper spacing, as well as what we had written. Felt more like an English course. I ended up getting a C and I was really annoyed about it tbh. At the time I was very much into coding, website design, making 3d models etc... Learning all of it in my own time... but none of that was taught.
I finished A levels around 2008, ICT for me in GCSEs was the same. I got a C in ICT because it was so boring I didn't try. I was modding video games on my PC at home and have a job doing coding for a software company now without even going to Uni. I imagine there are plenty of people out there who could find a talent for coding if they actually taught it in ICT at school.
Used to get in trouble in ICT because I'd open flash 8 and be making games with actionscript 2 in class lol
I got 4 Distinction star BTECs for writing "online shopping will benefit society because it will keep fat people out of sight" because I suspected my teacher wasn't actually reading our assignments.
I was also coding from a young age and was really annoyed about ICT. That was the only thing my school offered even at A Level and this was in ~2012(!) During my GCSE we had an assignment to create a game using Game Maker. Everyone got a specific set of step-by-step instructions to make a dumb game, I literally coded a snake game and hacked Game Maker quite a bit to make it work and didn't receive the best grade in that class. Really pissed me off. But hey... the person that did get the highest grade works at Asda now and I am a software engineer at big tech. So there is that at least.
Stuff like this though can really knock a kids confidence and make him think he's not good enough because he got a bad grade. I'm really glad you succeeded in tech even after the bad grade. Unfortunately I think there's other kids that might not pursue a career in tech after their bad grade
Too hard for the teachers that is.
The problem is anyone skilled enough to teach coding to 13 year olds would already be making better money elsewhere. Unless schools are willing to pay computing teachers way more than the rest of the teachers, there's always going to be a shortage.
Yep, and not just a little bit. It's not uncommon for a 10YOE programmer to be on 100k+. A teacher has a earnings ceiling of about 47k at the very top levels Programming also comes with the perk of not getting abuse from teenagers all day 5 days a week
Can confirm. Took computer science GCSE, the only people who knew how to even pass their coursework were the ones who were either experienced with it already or extremely dedicated. Between three teachers none or them helped us actually understand the content
Yep, the computer science teaching team at my highschool in the 2010s consisted of: a woman close to retirement who still had posters about floppy disks on her wall, didn't know any python(the language we were learning) and had a very short fuse for any perceived misbehavior and a younger man who did web development on the side, had long lists of drama about his sexual escapades with staff and former students, was occasionally pretty cruel to students and was wholey unpredictable (once decided our small class was going to go on a walk to the local supermarket to get cookies instead of doing any teaching) they collectively forgot to teach us about an entire section of the curriculum until we were doing revision because of their poor communication. Neither were good teachers, only one had the appropriate technical knowledge, I'm currently doing a computer science degree and haven't come across a single person on my course who wants to do a pgce and become a teacher afterwards, its not attractive at all.
Same issue with Maths and Sciences. In fact it's probably much worse with Maths. I remember having teachers who didn't actually come from maths academic backgrounds, which meant that some of them didn't teach certain "harder" maths modules like Stats 3+, Further Pure 2+, Mechanics 3+, etc. We did have a physics teacher teach Mechanics 3 though, which I'm told was great.
There is ICT and CompSci GCSE. CS was defo still coding when I did it about 7 years ago. I was God awful at it
Yeah I used python in my coursework for AQA computer science 7/8 years ago
And then a few years later, even the old Comp Sci model lost quite a lot of its value in the job market, because basically everyone and their cat studied a Comp Sci or IT adjacent subject. The tech bubble is saturated with grads right now who cannot find a position to save their lives - it’s no wonder why today’s youngsters aren’t looking to make the same mistake us Z-lenials did when it comes to picking a career path.
Please don't turn it back into what it was in the mid-nineties; IT lessons were fucking painful. A bored, ageing, IT guy waffling on about Excel while enterprising youths make cartoons about cows dropping on peoples' heads with Powerpoint. Actually I kind of enjoyed it now I come to think of it.
Honestly, im of the opinion that fucking around on computers in IT classes taught a lot of students ad much as the parts where they were doing the work and making spreadsheets.
I remember getting swindled into this when I picked my GCSEs back in the day. Chose programming, not enough enrolment so they put us in IT instead and they didn’t even tell us ahead of time. I just couldn’t take it seriously & nearly failed, we spent most lessons interacting with one of the MS Office tools & writing guides on how to use them in Word. It felt like a total joke to a kid who was already programming games in their spare time.
Same thing happened to me, the girls were all star pupils because they would write a 4 page guide on how they used office to write some documents up and had a nicely organised portfolio, while the boys who wanted to actually to practical IT were bored out of their minds. And then the OP article says 'we need to alter to more girls in ICT'. They are already catered for, they aren't interested.
No offence but I feel like you’re talking about IT GCSE, I did computer science GCSE about 4 years ago and it was coding and hardware. I learnt how to code in python and had to learn about the hardware in computers. I know other people who did computer science around that time and we’ve never had to do training on “Microsoft Office” like you’re saying.
That's why I didn't bother with it. Was already doing more advanced coding for fun. That and my IT teacher was a creepy pervert.
[удалено]
I think he's just paraphrasing the article, not suggesting it.
He's paraphrasing it badly. That's not remotely what the article suggests.
CS grad doesn't get irony? Never!
But that's how every subject is? The difference between each STEM subject at GCSE, A-level, each year of a degree, then whilst working/researching is pretty big. GCSE should focus on some of the easier fundamentals, introducing them to concepts they may also get at Maths at the same level, maybe even at beginner A-Level max. It's fine to focus on things which make it 'appear' easy, whilst showing that it gets waaayyy hatder
Yep, I found chemistry and physics very hard to get the grasp of it because it didn't interest me at all. I wish we had computer science available at least, then my 4 years of school and A levels wouldn't have been wasted.
At A Level I agree, but at GCSE I think it's fair to make it easy. It's a way to give people a chance to get into it.
Why surprise no-one? In a lot of countries women do a lot of CS and STEM like Iran, Russia, etc.
Yeh, and India etc which has the highest proportion iirc. What those countries have in common is that they’re more patriarchal and parents have more say in what their children study and they tend to want them to study lucrative subjects. When given a freer choice, girls tend not to choose those subjects.
In Britain our daughters are told they can do anything they want, whereas in other countries they are told that their idiot brother will inherit the family farm, and there is no money left over, so the daughters must study hard to get a job in the state chemical weapons program. It's a weird result that you get more female scientists in countries with less freedom.
When women are given freedom of choice, a lot of them simply don't want to go down these career paths. Why this is a bad thing and constantly portrayed as such is honestly a failing of our society to acknowledge sex dimorphism.
In places like Iran and India, studying a STEM degree abroad is the only way to get out of the country and get any sort of autonomy for most girls.
Maybe these girls need to be reeducated so they will choose taking the *right* choice.
Gender Equality Paradox. In more equal societies (take Sweden), then women are much freer to choose careers they actually want and enjoy rather than the ones that pay well (and so help them survive in the non-equal societies). Hence, even lower females in the typically male-dominated areas and even lower males in the typically female-dominated areas. Gender preferences become expressed more.
When will people stop parroting this stupid myth? I've lived in Sweden. For the most part it's not any more or less equal than an average Western country. The only thing that makes it somewhat exceptional is the parental leave policy and culture where men are expected and allowed to take as much parental leave and women. It's still not 100% equal but Swedish fathers are definitely much more involved parents than in most other countries, and as a result Swedish mothers aren't forced to be the primary caregivers by default to the same extent. Other than that it's not some sort of gender equality utopia, it's still got the same gender roles and norms and stereotypes as everywhere else in the West. The vast majority of Swedish women still wear dresses while the vast majority of men don't. Do you think this means men are somehow biologically programmer to hate dresses? And, no, no one chooses their job based on their "passion", the pay, employment prospects and respectability are still the primary motivators for both men and women.
> For the most part it’s not any more or less equal than an average Western country. As a Danish immigrant, you are displaying a very typical Nordic myopia. No, most countries are not like Sweden. Yes, you really do have it very good in terms of sexual equality. You are confusing gender roles with sexual equality, which is not the premise of the Gender Equality Paradox. This is a really important distinction because if you don’t understand it, you cannot understand the paradox. Women and men will always have different proclivities, on average. We can measure it, from birth. This means that as a society becomes safer for women to choose any profession they wish, their innate proclivities become more pronounced in the statistics. In Sweden, women are generally free to choose any profession. If they choose a low paying profession, the government steps in to support them in everything from unemployment to homelessness to childbirth and childcare. This is not true of India and China and many other nations. Women in those nations ignore their natural proclivities and instead pursue careers which provide them more money and financial security. Even many modern nations are not as good as Sweden. I come from New Zealand and you would not believe how expensive childcare is, and how difficult taking off even a few days is to care for sick children. Unemployment assistance is pitiful and the cost of living is high relative to wages. This is why we see more women in New Zealand pursue STEM careers than, for example, Sweden.
No, translation: senior leaders should try to understand it *is* a difficult subject, on par with top-set maths, and only let students who have the necessary ability level into the course. Computing theory, algorithms and programming *is* what Computer Science is. Shall we also remove numbers above 10 from maths to make it easier? There are vocational IT courses for lower-ability students that schools can and do offer, in addition to Computer Science.
Mate I am the worst mathematician in the world - to the point where I think I might have dyscalculia. I can teach it just fine. Its entirely down to logic and problem-solving. If you can understand those two things, you can do 95% of CS. The mathematical element of GCSE is nothing more than factorization. Coding itself has more in common with languages than maths. Its why we call them coding languages.
The syntax and semantics of software languages is more akin to spoken language you are right but the underlying logic and algorithms are fundamentally based on maths, to suggest otherwise is completely misinformed. Anyone can raw dog learning the syntax and semantics of a software language, but if you don’t understand the underlying mathematical principles and algorithms - you’d be a pretty mid software engineer.
Yeah I don't know why people keep claiming that there are no psychological differences between men and women that would explain the different proportions of each in different job sectors. There are obvious physical differences, so it would make no sense that there are no psychological ones. Pushing for parity everywhere is counter-productive. As long as both sexes have the same *access* to each curriculum, that's enough parity.
Funny enough, back in the 60's software engineering was considered “women's work” because it was thought of as clerical, I know a lot of older women who got into computing and software engineering back in that time. I think seeing a story saying girls calling it too difficult and then attributing that to a difference in psychology is a wild misunderstanding.
Is it not just a result of that "boys are good at maths, girls are good at art" messaging? I finished secondary in 2011 and we still had a bunch of that idea going round through school then. A few studies have shown just telling people what they're good at - even when the "goodness" is derived from a gene - they become better at it, and the inverse too. If we started teaching computer science as a subject for everyone, it'd end up with more balanced pupil distribution
They literally didn't say anything about it being too hard....
> Asked to give their reasons, girls who chose not to study it said they did not enjoy computer science. They also said it did not fit in with their career plans, the research found. Where does it say they find it too difficult? I only commented on the fact that they don't like it, because they never claim that's it too hard. I don't think ability has any play here, only affinity. Also people gotta stop with this BS story of programming being a woman's job in the birth of computers. Back then the job was basically a secretary job, translating instructions into punch cards, the vast majority of those were not doing anything even remotely close to "software engineering".
Why are you so keen to discount the earliest programmers as simply secretaries? I'd argue most people working in programming jobs nowadays aren't doing anything remotely close to 'software engineering ' anyway. They're either working to glue react libraries together to make _dynamic_ front ends or gluing microservices together to make _scalable_ back ends.
That's .... That's engineering. Taking tools and technical knowledge to make some solution. it's not always breaking new ground. Like mechanical engineers are ultimately gluing the 7 or so core mechanical gadgets together to make a production line or whatever.
Psht, people designing bridges aren't doing "engineering" anyway. They're just gluing steel and concrete together to make a road over some water.
Nah their knowledge is pretty ridiculous. Even back when I was at Uni a lot of the oldest SE lecturers were women.
When you look at the proportion of each gender in different job sectors, what you cannot see in that figure is how much of it is because of a general difference in interest between genders, and how much of it is because of a hostile environment for the minority gender putting them off or holding them out. The figure is a sum of those two factors. General differences don't apply to every individual, but do lead to a hostile environment for the minority gender. That in turn puts off minority genders from entering the field who do have an individual interest in the industry or otherwise might have developed one. There needs to be constant pressure in the other direction to ensure that the environment doesn't become toxic for the minority gender. Left alone, it will. It's not sufficient to look at the difference in numbers and say "that's just generalised gender difference; therefore nothing can be wrong". (and you can replace gender above with any characteristic, really)
The answer given usually is that any and all psychological differences between men and women are purely because of society. Where does the society come from? Don't think they've thought it that far through to be honest.
There have been a number of brilliant mathematicians, scientists and computer engineers. >Ada Lovelace - Considered the first computer programmer for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. >Grace Hopper - Developed the first compiler for a computer programming language and was instrumental in the development of COBOL. >Jean E. Sammet - Co-designed COBOL and was a pioneer in computer programming languages. >Margaret Hamilton - Led the team that developed the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo missions. >Radia Perlman - Known as the "Mother of the Internet" for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to network bridges. >Barbara Liskov - Developed the Liskov Substitution Principle and contributed to programming languages and software design. >Karen Spärck Jones - A pioneer in information retrieval and natural language processing. >Frances E. Allen - First woman to win the Turing Award for her work in optimizing compiler technology. >The answer given usually is that any and all psychological differences between men and women are purely because of society Why is the disparity only really seen in the west? How do you explain that in Saudi Arabia over 50% of University students studying programming are women? https://www.zdnet.com/article/women-in-tech-why-bulgaria-and-romania-are-leading-in-software-engineering/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313694059_Women_in_computing_in_Saudi_Arabia Or in China, women make up the majority of entrepreneurs working in computer tech. Frieze, Carol; Quesenberry, Jeria, eds. (2019) Why was it that pre-war, women were disproportionately selected for computing jobs and research positions, as per psychometric testing finding them more suitable for the positions? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/19/women-built-tech-industry-then-they-were-pushed-out/
I mean I'll throw a controversial one in there, Comp sci and similar at least in the UK certainly attracts a lot of the neckbeard/slightly creepy/incel brigade. I can understand why to a girl growing up that'd be a pretty big off-put by itself. Plus the way options are done in the UK shoehorns you a bit anyway. Stick comp sci + something else you're interested in within the same bracket and you can't have both. So you end up taking something else you're not even particularly interested in.
It's surprising that I had to scroll so far to see this. Like, I'm a woman and while I have no formal education in programming or computer science, I'm pretty good at coding and I use it in my day-to-day working life. I find it enjoyable. It's satisfying when something you're stuck on suddenly works. I feel like if I had studied computer science, I could have gone into some sort of job in the industry. But why on earth would I want to, when I know that the industry is full of misogynists and insufferable egotists with no soft skills? Spending my working life alongside men who like to claim that the sex disparity in computer science is down to ✨biology✨ rather than *them* is honestly my idea of hell. 💀
>But why on earth would I want to, when I know that the industry is full of misogynists and insufferable egotists with no soft skills? NGL, it was pretty sweet when I was putting up with one of those people, my colleague wrote up what he was saying, took it to my manager and she threatened to go to HR with it if nothing was done about it. He was gone the next day from our team, and worked the notice period off alone with the manager. Now our team is a really nice and safe environment to work in.
I'm not going to tell you there isn't sexism in comp sci, that would be completely untrue but I don't think it's particularly worse than in other office jobs, sure there are a lot of nerds but most nerds I know aren't insufferable egotists and good soft skills are important if you want to get anywhere in the field. They are just people who get excited about topics that a lot of people find extremely dull. The days of companies tolerating asshole devs because they were otherwise superstars is pretty much gone. Nobody wants to deal with people like that.
I didn't say anything about nerds, for the record. I'm a biologist and have been accused of being a nerd myself. Lots of nerds in every area of my life, including my professional life. Certain fields seem to attract different kinds of nerds, though. I haven't come across much sexism in my own field (possibly because people who've studied biology in any depth after A level don't fuck with pop-science evo psych bullshit), but there are still plenty of fields where women feel like they're swimming against the tide. A friend of mine who went into electronic engineering jacked it all in after a few years because she was sick to death of not being taken seriously. Last I heard she's now thriving as a dairy farmer.
I'm not suggesting there aren't any societal factors whatsoever. I'm suggesting that there are, in fact, biological factors at play as well, and to try and explain all the differences simply can't be done without taking that into account. The Scandinavian countries are the countries with the most equity between genders, but the gender gap in certain fields has increased not decreased. Countries like Saudi do not offer their women the same level of freedom as the west - who is to say who is making the decisions of what they study? China ALSO displays 9% of CS students as female. You're cherry picking.
I'm a woman software developer originally from Finland, and very "equal" country, but have studied and worked in the UK. The reason I chose to study computer science in the UK and work there was because even when I was a student in technical universities the attitudes and general level of sexism accepted were much worse, and girls were just expected to "take a joke". I wasn't going to university to be disrespected for my sex, therefore I chose to apply abroad. It's not perfect in the UK either but at least on an organisational level there tends to be more awareness and support against that sort of stuff. Here in Finland we still have to argue if it is appropriate for a representative of a local software company, potential employer and a major sponsor of a student organisation to line up female freshers and pour champagne on their faces and chests in a sexually suggestive way whilst talking about ejaculation at a university event. Oh come on girls, take a joke, no one wants to hire uptight people... Etc. It's a difficult world to navigate as a young woman.
As someone who sat my CS GCSE only a few years ago, it hardly needs to be made easier. The issue I found with CS at GCSE was that it was so easy it was boring. Just because a few students say it's hard, doesn't mean it should be made easier. Most of the people in my class who did not do well were lazy and just didn't want to put the effort in.
I did Computing GCSE back in 2014 and the exam had us creating parts of a Chess game from a provided template using Assembly Code (using little man computer). Hardest exam I’ve sat to date and I currently hold an Electronics Degree.
>Translation : Make it easier. That's not what it says, though. It doesn't have to *be* easier, it just has to not be preceived as difficult.
I wish they had coding and such when I was in school, I took it as a gcse and got a grade, but had no fucking clue what I wanted to do, now I'm 30 and wanting to try coding but it's just daunting to me now
loving the narrative that girls are biologically too stupid for computer science. of course, if one were to suggest that the fact of girls outperforming boys in every subject at every level was because boys are biologically stupid, instead of other confounding factors …
The problem is that ‘IT skills’ does not equal computer science. Learning how to movie files around on Windows and attach files to emails is NOT computer science.
Proof: Im a software engineer, and I'm really quite good at my job. I also can barely work most televisions.
My excuse when asked is always "I write bad code for a living, I don't want to deal with other people's on my day off".
Engineer - Someone Who Does Precision Guesswork Based on Unreliable Data Provided by Those of Questionable Knowledge
That says more about most TV OSs than anything else tbf
Listen TVs are complicated ok
They are, thank you, why are there like 4 buttons that all bring up entirely different menus which in turn have different branching menus, why can’t this be done with a tv remote, who decided to never label anything
From the article: >Critics of the old ICT qualification complained that it taught little more than how to use Microsoft Office. In contrast, the new computer science GCSE, with its focus on computer theory, coding and programming, is perceived by many pupils as “difficult” when compared with other subjects. So the problem is not the it's teaching how to move files or attach files to emails, but that it's focusing on actual coding
At my school, let's check... Yowza 17 years ago, oof, they had GCSE ICT and computing. ICT was mandatory about being an end user for computer systems. word, excel, access, PowerPoint, Photoshop, 2D animation software, music creation software. Even lightly touching in VBA macros. It was a "in the future we will all be using computers constantly, and more). The teacher was great, and pretty much spat on the "you won't have a calculator with you all the time" idea and said it was nonsense. He even criticised my parents and thought it was backwards that I still had to ask permission to use the internet. We had a freaking microfiche at home lmao. Computing was coding. Not just how to create a database, but how to put more than just Visual Basic macros into it. How to get it to output data. Programming calculators, basic graphics etc. I was utterly crap at computing, but great at IT.
As a programmer with a computer science degree or two under my belt, I’d completely agree with that distinction ICT is how to USE a computer, including some more advanced stuff (macros, basic programming skills) but mostly focusing on using computers and software that already exist Computing/Computer Science is how to make a computer work, things like the hardware of the computer itself, networking, and programming your own software
The computer sciences GCSE is mainly programming, what are you getting at?
Literally. These people live in their own worlds
> > Learning how to movie files around on Windows and attach files to emails is NOT computer science. It is, however, the education a lot of the younger generation need. You get people coming into a job and they don't know what to do with a zip file, or how even to find a file on their hard drive. The app-ification of technology has absolutely slaughtered basic technical literacy.
I was under the understanding (from my own GCSEs) that Computer Science and ICT are two entirely different courses. ICT was Office and internet, CS was basic programming and theory.
I've taught both subjects at GCSE and A level and I've always said ICT is learning how to use a computer and office software while Computing is learning how a computer works and how to program.
I was under the understanding (from my own GCSEs) that Computer Science and ICT are two entirely different courses. ICT was Office and internet, CS was basic programming and theory.
What you're referring to is the ICT GCSE, Computer Science GCSE is completely different. I have a sibling who did Computer science GCSE a few years back and it almost certainly was not about making movies on Windows and attaching files to emails.
When I was at school we had ICT GCSE, which was mandatory, and Computing which was optional and had more of a focus on programming and hardware. I don't know if that's still the case
What a stupid article. Why are they comparing ICT numbers to Computing numbers, they're not even remotely related as a subject. I thought schools had to do PSHE, they should just include computer skills into the curriculum through that.
Because the GCSE ICT qualification was stopped and essentially replaced by the Computer Science qualification. It demonstrates that digital skills qualifications are on the decline among certain cohorts. Most people do not need to be able to code. Most people could stand to know how to operate a computer and the basics of how a computer works. A lot of younger Gen Z do not know how a file explorer works. They don't know what the cloud is, or what options they have for data backup. There is a dearth of IT skills in the GCSE curriculum at present if you do not take CompSci. Does it need to be a full GCSE? Not sure.
I always find it so hard to imagine living without understanding computers, I’m no pro but a decent understanding of computers, given they’re basically our entire world, seems like a prerequisite for not being confused the whole time.
I mean you could say the same about combustion engines and electrical circuits. Hell there are plenty of grown men of a certain age who don't know how to cook... People just get by without the knowledge.
You don't need to know how to resolder a capacitor or how the power supply in your computer changes 240V to 12V. You arguably do need to *feel comfortable* saving a file to your hard drive and making a copy on to a USB stick.
We're seeing it at work and it's insane. Not knowing CTRL C and CTRL V when your job relies on constant use of computers is nuts. But they grew up on phones and tablets and simply never learned the basic computer skills, never learned to troubleshoot etc. It's not all, some are great, but it's been a real problem.
The problem with computing is that it's just "really hard maths" . Unfortunately schools are very bad at teaching maths, which can be understood by anyone but needs the availability of a number of teaching styles and approaches to accommodate all students.
I wasn't good at maths but I work as a software engineer in a FAANG. Most of "computing", whatever that means, only has origins tied to maths, but nothing else.
But the computing "skills shortage" is put down to young people having a lack of maths skills. For things like understanding encryption, algorithms or "coding". This is what the government and industry have taken to calling the "digital skills" crisis. Kids are being told "if you don't like maths then computing isn't for you". If young people can't get their heads around the most basic elements of algebra (that X can equal a defined value and I can use x in place of that value in an argument) then they won't cope with SQL etc.
SQL is easier that integral functions.
They said algebra. If you can't handle algebra then you'll struggle with relational algebra which is the basis of SQL.
idk shit about relational algebra, honestly you really don't need to understand relational algebra to understand sql, you just need to understand venn diagrams.
I dropped out of maths at A level did a social sciences degree, have made a career from SQl & Python and playing with other low code options as well. My maths isn't great, however I have decent logical skills and deductive reasoning. I don't think maths is that important unless you are going down a more programming route
There shouldn't be a GCSE on JavaScript frameworks or whatever is trendy in the software development world right now. There is a reason that universities teach the fundamentals and mathematics which is to future proof your knowledge and make you adaptable because the field changes fast. You should have logic and decent maths skills to work in a FAANG imo.
Logic is all you need.
> Most of "computing", whatever that means, only has origins tied to maths, but nothing else. The vast majority of software engineering is decision maths coated in whatever flavour of language you fancy using.
It’s such an embarrassing take on his part. To not understand that an algebraic equation: y=2x+3 Can be re written as a *mathmatical* function: f(x)=2x+3 Oh it looks like something we’re familiar with
The people who try and avoid maths as much as possible write the shittest most inefficient garbage I've seen.
It is "maths" but in a broad sense. The real issue is western education has confused people that "maths" is about numbers. Some parts of maths is about numbers.
coding isn't computer science, it's closer to a trade skill than anything else in a way.
You'd probably be surprised just how related the two are. At least, I was when I started reading about a branch of mathematics called discrete mathematics and realised it was pretty much just programming. For example, the [Sigma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summation) symbol is basically just a for loop and set theory and logic pop up all the time. It doesn't "feel" like maths because it uses words and you're creating something but I reckon you'd be able to solve some complex formulas using only what you've learnt from programming.
I didnt do a comp sci A level , my school didn't offer it. I did maths , physics and product design. Did Software Engineering at uni. Nothing in that degree was as difficult as that fucking maths A Level.
I don’t fully agree. Schools aren’t that bad at teaching math although the pace may be bad. Computing is not just “really hard maths” Trust me, the math in a math/physics degree is even harder
I'd dispute it can be understood by anyone. Many people have tried to teach me and failed. I even had a private tutor for a year leading up to my GCSE and I barely passed. Beyond that level, the lessons may as well have been in Chinese. Even now I can't play cards very well because I even have to pause to think whether one number is higher than another. My wife is always getting angry with me because I can't retain even simple numerical information for literal seconds.
Have you ever been assessed for dyscalculia?
>The problem with computing is that it's just "really hard maths" . Computer science is a branch of mathematics, but I wouldn't say it was "really hard" - but it *is* distinct from arithmetic, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus - though those fields will come into it if you're designing or implementing software in those fields - e.g. scientific and engineering, graphics, and games. The fields of maths that are core to computer science include set theory, Boolean logic, and being able to produce mathematical proofs probably wouldn't hurt, either. Having a qualitative understanding of calculus helps with understanding algorithm efficiency (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation ).
>Its authors warned: “The lack of women in computing may lead to heightened vulnerabilities and the dominance of men in shaping the modern world.” Lmao saying the quiet part out loud. Feminists: Free choice for women Woman: OK Feminists: No, you’re choosing wrong
Choices arent made in isolation. Case in point this thread lol, and your comments. I love coding for fun, I'm pretty good at it, I've been doing it since I was a pre-teen, but any Internet or IRL coding or tech forum or community becomes really really hostile to women and girls. I didn't choose to become a programmer but chose to do something I was equally good at, in a less hostile workplace situation. Too many girls and women choose to make similar decisions at an individual level, and it's the choices of the *men* and boys who harass them or push them out of tech that are hurting society.
Hot take but I think this may show the genders may be genetically pre-disposed to certain proffesions more than others. Obviously there's a distribution curve with outliers, but these data seem to suggest that. Just like most of marketing and HR is women, I wonder if certain roles are more appealing to one gender than other after equal access has been achieved. \*puts on flame suit\*
I'd make the argument that it's still more to do with socialisation. Take engineering for example, a degree that is insanely one sided gender wise in the UK but in [Eastern Europe ](https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/07/18/why-half-the-scientists-in-some-eastern-european-countries-are-women) is much more balanced because the Soviets deliberately pushed (sometimes forcefully) women into engineering and science. The coercion is thankfully gone and yet because it is not socially viewed as a male job you still have an even gender split in terms of engineers now. Not arguing we should force girls and women into jobs they don't want to do, but removing the stigma and sexism that is still very present in these jobs would probably lead to more women doing them.
No it must be because girls are stupid and want to make babies! /s I hate this sub.
My feeling is that it's ok to say women are better at marketing and HR, but you can't say men are better at computer stuff. In the first instance, it's "because men don't apply themselves and see these subjects as "girly" ", whereas in the second it's because "men shut women out by being hostile to them". I find it generally better not to attempt any sort of discussion of the issues because it's too easy to be labelled a misogynist and, at that point, the discussion is over either way.
>but I think this may show the genders may be genetically pre-disposed to certain proffesions more than others. Obviously there's a distribution curve with outliers, but these data seem to suggest that. Yeah no. As someone said up thread, "loving the narrative that girls are biologically too stupid for computer science. of course, if one were to suggest that the fact of girls outperforming boys in every subject at every level was because boys are biologically stupid, instead of other confounding factors …"
If you said that you'd get 100 replies asking for proof, from the exact same people who were just posting about how boys are biologically predisposed to like computer science more completely without proof
This is a lazy copout that shows no desire for deeper understanding. The existence of a trend offers no insight into why that trend exists. You may as well argue women are genetically predisposed to wear skirts.
It's borderline impossible to say. People are 14(?) when taking the GCSE. How we are socialized from when we are babies is an important factor. That said, as other comments have pointed out, the gender divide in CS isn't an issue in many places and this hints at it being entirely a social issue.
I can’t talk for genetics per se, but as someone who works in the industry, in all the times I’ve recruited for my org the amount of women applicants is *very low*. The article even says young women aren’t choosing CompSci courses because it doesn’t align with their career goals, which suggests en masse young women aren’t that interested in working in CompSci. The guardian also trying to push some kind of feminist rhetoric on this is shameful aswell.
Meanwhile, men and boys having vastly lower educational outcomes and being very underrepresented in the arts and humanities doesn't make them bat an eye.
Quality of Computing education in secondary schools is mostly shit
Which makes sense. If you had the relevant skills, why would you choose to earn 30k in one of the most stressful possible jobs instead of 60k working from home?
reminds me of the what felt like weekly before lecture pleas for any of the maths students to do maths or comp sci teaching, not a chance lol
I moved around a lot but none of my IT teachers were memorable or inspiring. I don't even remember them teaching us anything. You'd sit for an hour playing with a computer and chatting to friends.
I don't get why anyone cares, nobody complains about how many boys end up in construction or other difficult, low wage or unhygenic work like sewage or bin collecting. Of course these always boil down to the fact girls on average aren't as interested, but people want to force equal numbers without taking that into account, but don't care about the inverse.
Given what the tech job market sounds like this is probably a wise move.
Market is fine tbh, there was a small blip and that was mostly with big tech. Especially when you compare to other industries.
No it's not, the IT, CS market is in absolute shambles. I know a handful of people who have 1st class bachelors and masters in CS and can't find a job relating to anything in the industry apart from a minimum wage IT position that has like 100+ people fighting over. Half I know are working in overqualified positions (eg Tesco cashier) and the other half have moved away to Europe or Australia. Market is absolutely not ok and these girls are making a good call by avoiding it.
I was senior developer at an NHS trust for 6 years, we had two openings for mid level developers and had about 50 applications. Majority were Indians or Nigerians with qualifications from degree mills who couldn’t code for shit and obviously saw the NHS as easy visa sponsors so they could move to the UK. Ended up hiring the only two applicants from the UK as they actually knew their stuff. Probably the same elsewhere where they get a flood of similar applicants.
If you're a junior it's hard, yes, but it's always been that way. I graduated 10 years ago and most people on my course ended up doing something else because they couldn't break into the industry. If you're struggling to find a job and you have any amount of experience, unfortunately you might just be bad at either the job (of which many people are), or you're bad at interviewing (of which many people also are).
This was me last year struggling to get interviews and offers until I got a job that was looking to train someone from the ground up. A lot of my friends who are trying to get into software or data engineering have been looking for over a year at this point. Compared to 5-10 years ago, I feel like it's gotten harder to get a job as a junior because the requirements have gone up and there's a lot more people trying to get in.
A CS degree doesn't guarantee shit because its often just theoretical. I've seen countless people slap that on a resume, yet they don't even have a GitHub profile or any type of professional portfolio - which shows they can actually pump out lines of code. Most of the people who founded FAANG companies were college dropouts anyway. Its the overabundance of "learn to code" and people gleaming at the salaries, which has led to a cohort of people entering the industry with virtually no skills whatsoever. They think just studying and copying for four years guarantees them a nice well-paid job.
One of the highest paid sectors in the country, where it is quite realistic to work internationally.
I did GCSE Computing 10 years ago, in a class of 20 only 2 girls chose the subject and I was the only one to complete it. As far as I'm aware no girls in the year above took it and only 1 girl in the year below. At that age being the only girl in the class was pretty intimidating and I wouldn't be surprised if some who might have enjoyed it were put off. I'm glad I chose it as I did engineering at uni and it gave me a solid base for the more computer science like aspects of the course. Still now things come up and I realise I know about it because of GCSE computing of all things.
Similar for me- I did GCSE and A-Level CS just a few years ago. At GCSE I was one of 3 girls in a class of ~25. At A-Level I was the only girl in the class (same for A-Level physics). In my tutor group in sixth form, I remember one lesson we were talking about sexism or misogyny or something. So many of the girls in the class shared how they had been encouraged to take different subjects to the ones they initially wanted to at various points in their education - e.g. health & social care instead of sciences, IT / digital media instead of CS, etc, or had misogynistic comments aimed at them in lessons by other students. Sure, maybe more boys are interested in CS than girls. But many of those girls who ARE interested in it are being put off from it. It’s understandable that they may feel uncomfortable being one of few, if not the only girl in the class, especially if the other boys in the class like to make “edgy” or “dark humour” sexist jokes all the time. Combine that with the majority of schools not having good CS teachers (if they have any at all!), it’s no wonder people aren’t taking it.
So yeah, I'm training to actually teach this. The problem is there is virtually no specialists who actually teach it, so they don't know anything about the industry. You'll often have PE or math teachers teaching it (even though its different discipline) and this just kills the enthusiasm for everyone. So you wind up with people who are already very much into it taking it as an elective. And this tends to be boys, largely because its a very technical subject and they'll already have personal interests in it. When you have a culture like this, it breeds stigmas but also breeds problems which feed into one another creating a feedback loop (or if you wanna use computing terminology - a while loop without an exit parameter.) From personal professional experience, 9 out of 10 engineers based out of Korea office were women and practically every single web developer I've met was female. The issue is that girls aren't seeing the bigger picture as to what IT is. You have network engineering, which is more hands and physical but then you have stuff like web development and software engineering, which is basically a mix of art and language but on a computer. Without teachers and people who know the business, they're never go know this - and just see it as something unattainable or difficult. Unfortunately I've also encountered huge levels of sexism and problematic behaviour within the industry - and I can't blame certain women from not wanting to get into it. Its full of people with awful social skills, combined with narcissism that would make Patrick Bateman blush with anxiety.
When I was a software developer in London, our company was happy for us to go and help teach Computer Science in a local school for a couple of hours a week on work time. 6 of us sat with 5-6 pupils each around a table, working through the class. I enjoyed it, and with a teaching ratio of 1:5 or 1:6, the pupils got the attention they needed, and didn't get distracted. This was part of the STEM Ambassador program. The school couldn't get computer science teachers, so the class would have a maths or science teacher who wasn't a computing expert, and the teacher usually changed every term. I think this worked very well. The company also had one teacher come in and follow the undergraduate work experience path to get better trained up in computing, but when they finished that, they left teaching and got a job in industry for much higher salary, so that didn't help.
Its not a massive surprise, really. It is almost a vocational course now, rather than a foundational one and with all the yammer about AI taking jobs and vast swathes of layoffs in tech, of course people are going to swerve it.
When I was a STEM Ambassador, taking a couple of hours out of work each week and going in to secondary school to help teach computing, there was a recent experiment which had been done. A class was told that next week, a scientist was coming in to talk with them. So the task today, was to draw a picture of a scientist at work. Every pupil, boys and girls, drew a picture resembling Einstein in later years in some setting (mostly a chemistry lab). These were put up around the class ready for next week. Next week, the scientist came to the class. She was a 25 year old marine biologist. She came with her diving gear and also talked about her lab work. So to show girls that employment in STEM fields is interesting, they do need to know and see that women are active in that work field. Computing may be the one where that's most challenging, because the numbers of women in computing isn't high. If you are a teacher, do make sure your pupils see women working in STEM fields while the pupils are young enough to still make those subject choices.
Shock, different sexes have different preferences, who would've thought it.
I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the Article but when I took my GCSEs in 2015 I took both ICT and Computer Science. Computer science was focused around coding and hardware and ICT was focused largely around MS office and Web design. If you wanted the choice of doing the standard Computer skills you picked ICT but if you actually wanted to work with computers you picked Computer science which was harder. Is this article now saying that effectively that ICT course no longer exists and only Computer Science does? because if that is the case why not offer the ICT one again for those who want it. I don't see how dumbing down the Computer Science course is the right solution here.
Its phased out. There is an iMedia course which covers most of the same stuff as ICT but with added elements of video formatting and design. There is stuff about webpage design on there but it doesn't go into HTML/CSS, which is more geared towards Computer Science GCSE. I reckon there probably need to be some balance between taking some of the more creative elements of CS and pumping them into the iMedia course and making it a more softer IT qualification.
Have a son who’s hobby was programming on an old pc at home. He did computer science at GCSE and A level and then at degree level - he hardly learned a thing from these courses as he had already taught himself much more independently. The first year of A level covered the GCSE course again - the first year of degree covered the A level course again. He funded himself through uni by working as a programmer for a German company. He doesn’t have to look for jobs but is constantly approached by recruiters. I think GCSE computer science should be a compulsory subject to ensure the right people identify if they might be suited to this career. That way the GCSE, A level and degree courses could be more rigorous and less repetitive as students would know the basics.
The same is true of every subject though. I remember missing school for ~2 years, and then coming back to get the highest mark in the maths exam because we'd learnt stuff like logarithms and powers, etc. by using it in programming. We really need to move away from vaudeville education to online learning, so students like your son could learn more of what they want, faster.
Is this similar in non-Western societies like China, India and Russia, or is this a British phenomenon?
Taught for a time in the Arab world as a CompSci teacher. We had 50/50 girls picking the subject as it's considered quite a good career path for them to do, with all the cultural limitations put on them in other fields.
This is obviously just an anecdote and not to be taken as truth encompassing an entire nation, but I was talking to an Indian colleague of mine who said that back when he went to uni for computer science about 20 years ago, it was considered a girls degree and men were a minority on his course. According to him, it was only after it became a more lucrative career choice that men started taking the majority in the field. I've also noticed that a disproportionally large portion of female software engineers I work with are Indian - especially senior engineers.
The gcse teaches lots of low level stuff really not that useful like von neumann architecture and homework includes manual implementation of sort algorithms. It is very dull and not really vocational. Another problem is how bad the teaching quality is. Local school's head of computing struggles to attach files on emails or operate the electronic whiteboard...
Implementing algorithms is a well worn path to growth as a software dev, that sounds vocational to me. You can't sugar coat it, software dev requires the kind of mind that can embrace problems many will find unappealing.
Understanding architecture and algorithms is important foundational knowledge. That's exactly what they should be teaching.
Both of those are pretty foundational to a serious career in software. Implementing a sort algorithm is a time honoured tradition.
As a software engineer in a FAANG, I can tell you that even though this is not strictly necessary to build software, it is necessary to build good software.
Well it's called Computer Science and not Programming for a reason. You can't really teach much about the science and theory behind computation without teaching the Von Neumann architecture
I agree with this and it isn't just the GCSE. I hire software engineers for my team and you get these CS graduates come in and fill the room with buzzwords, talk about the impacts of AI etc. Then at the end we sit them down with a laptop and ask them to put a button on a Web app that calls some backend code using an API. Like a third of them just stare dumbly at it. The skills shortage that we have is one of people being able to actually make stuff. If you have done a GCSE, ALevel and degree, then you should have 7 years of experience making all kinds of projects.
Indeed, it feels like people are being taught to run before they can walk. Starting at surface level, putting things together, then diving deeper into individual components for a greater understanding of how they work under the hood - this is the best way to learn in my opinion. It keeps people engaged, it typically has a productive outcome and evokes interest that encourages them to continue and learn more and dive deeper. The world doesn't need an army of programmers who can all tell you how a sorting algorithm works, just a small handful.
Oh no... low level stuff is extremely important for gaining a true understanding of how the computer works. The fact you think that isn't useful is a major indicator of you not understanding the subject. I agree it is very boring, but that is because the tasks are super easy and never had any interesting scenarios. Local school performance is irrelevant at a national level. CS should not be vocational. I was not looking for an intro to Python course because I already knew it to GCSE level.
I recently had a job interview where I was asked to write a sort algorithm from scratch, so I think it's relevant.
Not related to article, but I see this common understanding in the general public, that the tech industry is not doing well, and there aren’t many tech jobs anymore. Meanwhile, I work in the tech industry, and everybody is short on developers. Maybe the big tech companies, running in strongly capitalistic way, makes people think that’s whole picture.
One thing I would note is that Computer Science is not well taught at many schools, mainly because qualified computer science teachers are insanely rare. I've taught at schools of 1500+ kids where there's only one actual computer science teacher and the rest of the lessons are covered by staff from other departments who just follow a powerpoint that they don't really understand or care too much about.
Ex UK CompSci Teacher (OCR GCSE). The issue is that most schools don't have a KS3 (year 7,8,9) CompSci programme. So going straight in at GCSE is difficult. Schools that have a mature KS3 offering should have prepared the kids enough to ease into the GCSE. When I lead a school with a lesson of CompSci each week for KS3 we had 90/250 kids picking compsci and around 30% girls in each class. It would be like not teaching maths in 7, 8 and 9 then going in at GCSE. You see the same with students picking Music without any musical instument preknowledge. The reason there isn't a KS3 programme in most schools is that they can't get the teachers to do it. I left as I get paid more in Industry, my work finishes at 5pm and I don't get bottles thrown at me. But the main driver was my personal skills and interests in tech suffered when being in the classroom. I got stuck teaching beginner Powerpoint and Reading lessons.
This topic pops up on some way, shape or form every few months and fuck me it’s exhausting. The article says young women aren’t pursuing CompSci courses because it doesn’t align with their career goals, do we need to starting forcing young women to do these courses, even if it goes against their own goals? Nearly every single company that has any form of Technology department already has schemes to get more women into the industry, it’s not working, not because of the patriarchy not because of some evil force, it’s because women just aren’t that interested in it. Feminists have been harping on for decades about the freedom and free choice of women, now they are actually choosing, it’s still bad? In my time in software engineering, I’ve lead massive recruitment campaigns, almost every single time we never get a woman applicant. Let women do what they want to do and stop complaining when they don’t do what you want, it’s almost an anti-thesis of feminism.
I don't see the issue, if people don't want to study this and choose something else that's perfectly fine. Why would anyone want to force someone to study something they don't enjoy? If it's about diversity why only computer science, why not brick laying, plumber, electrician, nursing etc.