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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?
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday December 23 2016, @09:48AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday December 23 2016, @10:57AM
"Before the '80s, programming was seen as an offshoot of secretarial work"
Says someone who apparently wasn't alive, or at least not programming, before the 1980s. Flip through the pictures in this timeline [computerhistory.org]. Women did data entry, but the people doing the technical work were mostly men. There was a whole slew of articles a couple of years ago, attempting to re-write history. [stanford.edu] Their source was apparently a puff piece in Cosmopolitan from 1967 [thesocietypages.org].
It was a nice try, but it's still not true. I started programming in the 1970s, and my dad (born in 1933) was a self-taught programmer beginning in the late 1960s. From what I saw of his work, and what I experienced myself: There were individual exceptions, but overall men were the programmers. Women did a lot of data entry. On the development side, you found women mostly in supporting roles, like tech-writing or testing. That's the way it was, and wishful thinking won't change it.
Large numbers of women first entered into computer science in the 1970s, peaking in the 1980s; this has declined since. Why? My personal theory is that there was has been too much pressure for achieving equality of results (equal numbers) rather than equality of opportunity. "Is she competent, or a diversity hire?" Competent women have to prove themselves over and over again - not because we discriminate against women, but because reverse discrimination has given incompetent women qualifications and jobs for which they are not qualified. Totally counterproductive, and demoralizing as hell for those women who genuinely are competent.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:12PM
1985-2000 was sort a golden age for UX as the personal computing industry took off, followed by the dotcom era of the Internet, where it was common to handcode HTML and Javascript or use relatively straightforward tools. The technical side for many jobs could be picked up in a few weeks, perhaps with the help of a weeklong training course which usually cost slightly north of $1K.
There were lots of women as well as men in their '20s involved in writing shrinkwrapped software, and in web site development.
After the dotcom crash, I think a lot of them moved on to different career paths.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday December 23 2016, @11:09AM
:D
Let me guess, "social pressures" are how patriarchy oppresses women.
Last I checked it was the feminists who were claiming that [theguardian.com]. So when are the liberals going to fight patriarchy to punish women just as much as men? Ans.: Never, because patriarchy and feminists are prostitute and her agent fighting for bigger cut.
Social pressures exist on men just as much on women. You know why men were pushed into engineering? Because engineering has always been seen as a physically laborious job with high risks of accidents. The very push to have more women in CS is EXACTLY because laymen are educated enough to know CS jobs require sitting down for hours and getting paid heavily. But feminism is all about finding new and novel ways to see women as victim and get some freebies thrown their way for it.