I agree with all of what’s discussed, apart from the Computing curriculum slide. I believe it is not the case that the topics are “inappropriate” to childrens’ ages, but in fact the content is inappropriate for expecting all teachers to teach it. Call me biased because I study Computer Science, but I wouldn’t underestimate what you can teach to a 5 year-old. If they can add up numbers and understand what a set of instructions are, they can understand what an algorithm is. Don’t get me wrong, Gove is a complete moron and shouldn’t have introduced the Computing curriculum so broadly and so quickly, but the issue is training the teachers on delivering the content, not the children’s learning capacity.
I speak from experience. Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) is a great tool for getting kids into programming. I ran a workshop where we introduced Scratch to a variety of ages. There was a five year-old girl learning how to program. To her, she was making a butterfly move around the screen and change colour, but it was still programming, and she understood how it worked because she then did the same thing but made a dog!
We have Primary Schools coming to us asking to be taught concepts of Computer Science, and the demand must be the same throughout the country. Gove messed up big time, and as a result he will inflict a negative attitude towards Computer Science, rather than trying to promote it.
Computer Science isn’t as boring and inaccessible as most people think.
A Charter for Primary Education 
I’ll explain it to you, Mr Gove, it’s about USING your brain.
I agree with all of what’s discussed, apart from the Computing curriculum slide. I believe it is not the case that the topics are “inappropriate” to childrens’ ages, but in fact the content is inappropriate for expecting all teachers to teach it. Call me biased because I study Computer Science, but I wouldn’t underestimate what you can teach to a 5 year-old. If they can add up numbers and understand what a set of instructions are, they can understand what an algorithm is. Don’t get me wrong, Gove is a complete moron and shouldn’t have introduced the Computing curriculum so broadly and so quickly, but the issue is training the teachers on delivering the content, not the children’s learning capacity.
I speak from experience. Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) is a great tool for getting kids into programming. I ran a workshop where we introduced Scratch to a variety of ages. There was a five year-old girl learning how to program. To her, she was making a butterfly move around the screen and change colour, but it was still programming, and she understood how it worked because she then did the same thing but made a dog!
We have Primary Schools coming to us asking to be taught concepts of Computer Science, and the demand must be the same throughout the country. Gove messed up big time, and as a result he will inflict a negative attitude towards Computer Science, rather than trying to promote it.
Computer Science isn’t as boring and inaccessible as most people think.