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posted by on Friday December 23 2016, @02:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the barbie-dolls-are-a-bad-influence dept.

A revolution is under way in the teaching of computer science in schools in England - but it risks leaving girls and pupils from poorer backgrounds and ethnic minorities behind. That's the conclusion of academics who've studied data about the move from ICT as a national curriculum subject to computer science.

Four years ago, amid general disquiet that ICT was teaching children little more than how Microsoft Office worked, the government took the subject off the national curriculum. The idea was that instead schools should move to offering more rigorous courses in computer science - children would learn to code rather than how to do PowerPoint.

But academics at Roehampton University, who compile an annual study of computing education, have some worrying news. First, just 28% of schools entered pupils for the GCSE in computing in 2015. At A-level, only 24% entered pupils for the qualification.

Then there's the evidence that girls just aren't being persuaded to take an interest - 16% of GCSE computing entrants in 2015 were female and the figure for the A-level was just 8.5% . The qualification is relatively new and more schools - and more girls, took it in 2016 - but female participation was still only 20% for the GCSE and 10% for the A-level.

Why is it girls are not attracted to computer science? Is it some deeply embedded gender bias, or something else?


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @04:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @04:44AM (#444928)

    You don't realize it but you are describing the exact problem being discussed.

    You excelled in a learning environment that was designed by and for people like yourself. Of course it was fun for you to immerse yourself in it.

    You think that was easy for you just happens to also be a completely neutral environment when that's not so at all. Kind of like a fish who wonders why birds don't hang out under water because, you know, nobody is keeping them out. Must be something wrong with birds, because who doesn't like water?

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:45AM (#444978)

    Yah, some asshole designed the computer course to be run in a computer lab with dozens of computers around and having to talk in computer language and be humiliated by making logic errors on a computer. It's as if they deliberately tried to exclude people who didn't want to sit motionless in front of a monochrome screen for like 19 hours a day with no breaks. Bastard sexists.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @09:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @09:19AM (#444994)

      Computers used to be the ultimate perfectionists. One had to have everything absolutely perfect or the thing flat would not run.

      It was like a big puzzle... and computer programming appealed to those who loved solving puzzles.

      Which mostly seemed to be guys with asperger's or some other aspect of their lives that made them more comfortable around the nonjudgmental machine than around humans.

      I had a lot of trouble dealing with people who judged me on things that meant absolutely nothing to me... but to a computer, right was right, and wrong was wrong. For everyone, no special favors because someone knew someone.

      I got the idea maybe women had a hard time with science because it did not honor the "feminine mystique". They could not coo at it to make it behave. Fancy perfumes, clothing, or who was their friends made no impact over whether or not the thing would work. Only an understanding of the science behind the thing meant anything.

  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday December 23 2016, @11:13AM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Friday December 23 2016, @11:13AM (#445009) Journal

    How could the girls find out it "wasn't designed for them"?

    They never showed up for class.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @03:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @03:24PM (#445040)

      Birds don't take swims find out how unpleasant it is to be underwater either.

      Please tell me you aren't so hyper-literal that you think no woman ever showed up for any class ever? That women don't talk to anyone about what classes are like and hear through word of mouth how unpleasant they and the people in them are?

      Its like you are determined to stick to your personal narrative no matter non-nonsensical.

      • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:50PM

        by Justin Case (4239) on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:50PM (#445544) Journal

        Maybe being hyper-literal is a key to success with computers.

        Anyway, I'm not debating why females didn't show up. They just didn't. Nobody locked them out. It was their choice, for whatever reason.

        Perhaps you're right that "word of mouth" scared them off. What fool stakes their career on the mutterings of others? Go find out for yourself.

        Perhaps you (or another AC) are right that computers "weren't designed for girls". What an incredibly sexist statement! Computers and computer labs were designed for computing. It was a new, difficult area of study. Just getting and keeping the damn thing working took all we had. Nobody had time to go slapping pink flower stickers all over everything.

        You call my story nonsense. It is fact. I was there. Females weren't.