10th August 2012 9:33
By Blue Tutors
Big Businesses Kick School Teaching Where It Hurts
Google has waded in to the debate on ICT teaching, just as the London Evening Standard did on Literacy. Both have felt it necessary to intervene in a curriculum that isn’t providing what the industries say they need.
In May, Google unveiled a plan to invest in computer science teachers via the Teach First charity, which puts "exceptional" graduates on a six-week training programme before deploying them to schools where they teach for a two-year period. It aims to train 100 such graduates over the next three years.
Each will have a bursary to buy equipment, such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino computer kits.
This comes as a response to what the Department for Education, as well as others, has called the ‘sorry state’ of ICT teaching in schools today. The curriculum is accused of being outmoded - surely never a good thing in a subject whose whole purpose should be a drive towards future technology.
Teaching of Power Point was criticised, along with an over-reliance on IT skills which don’t take pupils much beyond the age of 16. Instead, critics argue that the subject should be teaching pupils Computer Science, with App building & code writing, equipping them for a potential career in the computing industry.
While this all seems a great idea, what is ludicrous is the responsibility being placed on teachers to come up with their own curriculum. This is further exacerbated by the fact that according to government statistics only 35% of ICT teachers are specialists, compared with more than 80% for core subjects such as maths and English.
Google perhaps have the right idea, but it is rather embarrassing that it takes Google to point out the way through this issue to the government.