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Agree. I volunteer 'teach' https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ in the UK. The main article is true, not the teacher's fault, the government moved the focus from ICT [learning Word, learning Excel] to computing very quickly. This is a great idea because we're back to 'creation' as in the days of BASIC games rather than consumption.

But it's a human enterprise and YMMV, the teachers and the pupils will vary in ability and motivation. I live in one of the poorer parts of London and any kids that 'want' this may have a good future. They can't all be football or hip-hop stars. Secondly there's an initiative called Computing at School http://www.computingatschool.o... that promotes computational thinking. Even if you don't program, some of the problem solving techniques are universally applicable.

So one can find a lot to moan about, but there's a lot of promise/fun in this. I wrote my first program in about 1966 [FORTRAN on a mainframe] and I still enjoy it, in the UK that makes me [what they call] a 'sad' person.

Yes agree. I teach Code Club in the UK and [in spite of a 40 year attachment to computing, I'm what they call a 'sad person'] I was wondering about forcing code down unwilling young throats. However, in the UK, Computing at School: http://www.computingatschool.o... broadens the area out to show, for example, that you can decompose and 'debug' non-computing problems.

So I think this blended approach of 'code' and 'code thinking' is a good way to go.

There's another fairly major point: although the title of this /. thread talks about "computing teachers", the summary talks about "primary and secondary teachers", and the original press release talks about "teachers responsible for teaching computing". Primary school teachers, who were already expected to know everything about everything, are now (PDF warning) expected to teach programming, debugging, networking, etc. There's no particular reason why people who signed up to teach 5 to 7 year-olds ten years ago would be more likely than the general populace to be good at debugging.

Take the time to visit non-profit organization Computing At School.

Their own description of themselves is:

The Computing At School Working Group (CAS) is a grass roots organisation that aims to promote the teaching of Computing at school. CAS is a collaborative partner with the BCS through the BCS Academy of Computing, and has formal support from other industry partners.

They are dedicated to finding and sharing the best ways to teach IT to the young(er) generations, and they have a proven track-record with great results.

I am not affiliated with them; but I use their website and material for my own children, because nothing better is available to me locally.

You can join their online Educators Community here:

http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/door

- Jesper

Take the time to visit non-profit organization Computing At School.

Their own description of themselves is:

The Computing At School Working Group (CAS) is a grass roots organisation that aims to promote the teaching of Computing at school. CAS is a collaborative partner with the BCS through the BCS Academy of Computing, and has formal support from other industry partners.

They are dedicated to finding and sharing the best ways to teach IT to the young(er) generations, and they have a proven track-record with great results.

I am not affiliated with them; but I use their website and material for my own children, because nothing better is available to me locally.

You can join their online Educators Community here:

http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/door

- Jesper