back to article Fewer than half GCSE computing students got a B or higher this year

The UK government has been told to tackle teacher shortages in Blighty – and offer more support for those now teaching tougher syllabuses – as GCSE computing results showed little improvement on last year. Today's results show a marginal improvement on the 2016 figures – this year, 41 per cent gained a B or higher, compared …

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  1. Instinct46

    Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

    The amount of education you need to teach and for IT is quite high to be qualified on a university level, now why would you pay all that money and then settle for a job which caps at about 25 - 30k a year?

    Anyone who is good will go into IT not into teaching GCSE level IT.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      Same as in any subject, IT is no different.

      Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

      However, that's not the reason. The reason is that - in nearly 20 years of working IT in schools, private and state, primary, secondary and beyond - I have met precisely two people who actually know the first thing about IT. As in, unsupervised, they could go through an install wizard without messing things up.

      One was a former industrial control programmer.

      One was an astrophysicist.

      Literally, everyone else I see who teaches IT or computing in schools has NO CONCEPT of IT whatsoever. I know, because I deal with them every day.

      If they code, they code in Scratch. Mostly, they can't even do that. They have no grasp of computer science (distinct from "computing") and no grasp of modern computing.

      It's not to do with the other people all going out to industry, it's to do with having to put up with the nonsense of being a teacher, and keep up with IT, from a base of "I know how to use Ctrl-C, aren't I clever?".

      I manage the IT for a private school with the first of the above as the "head of ICT", i.e. teaching IT (the other is my own brother...). We get a lot of stuff done that most people can't even dream of working IT in schools. But that took a long time to find. Over 20 years, I have had everything from a "Head of VLE" who actually didn't know what a VLE was ("It's like Google, isn't it?"), to the youngest teacher / mug in the school who, each year, got the role palmed off to them and they could barely log on themselves. Repeat next year, next year, next year, etc.

      It's not that you can't be IT and teach, it's that a) You wouldn't want to teach (I briefly considered it after uni, but worked in a school for a while and quickly changed my mind) and b) the things that you are made to teach, and shown how to teach, are dull, out-of-date, poor-practice, had no relevance to modern computing (even with the new ICT curricula) and certainly won't be at all useful to the kids anyway (but then, I grew up on BBC Micros in school, so it doesn't really matter, that last bit).

      Stop teaching kids that copy/paste from Google images into word is "computing", or especially "computer science", it's not. Nor is putting a loop flowchart icon into a piece of Lego software. The bar is set FAR TOO LOW still, and as such all the interesting stuff is completely out-of-syllabus anyway so decent people can't be bothered to spend their lives just teaching taht.

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

        Stop teaching kids that copy/paste from Google images into word is "computing"

        Really? Wow. I had to write a database for my Computer Studies 'O' Level ffs.

    2. DNTP

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      You've hit the nail on the head.

      BIOLOGY: The subject that they couldn't pay me enough to teach. Literally. Because the maximum salary cap after ten years of service is below the current annual cost of living, and partly that's because of all the biotech companies in the city. And yet every year since 2006 I get a call from my university asking for monetary donations, and then trying to guilt me into taking a public career.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      One possible solution to that is to scrap university fee's for STEM subjects and have people spend 20 years giving a half/full day a week teaching or a set amount of time. Employers won't mind as it means more staff which equals lower pay so giving time off pays for itself.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

        I would be very happy to help out in local schools or colleges - but not for the godawful GCSE syllabus we have that seem designed to suck the life out of the subject.

    4. 45RPM Silver badge

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      …and, sad to say, university level IT / computing isn’t well taught these days either. The first thing that I have to do when employing graduates is teach them C - and, once they have C under their belts, then they can begin to become adept in the other languages that I may need them to use.

      Other (basic) things that they don’t know / understand include:

      modulo arithmetic

      matrix transforms

      how a computer actually works (to most it’s just a magic box for running software)

      algorithmic efficiency (big O and so forth)

      Fortunately, they’re all bloody clever - so they pick it up quickly - but that doesn’t alter the fact that, as an employer, I shouldn’t have to be the one who teaches them this stuff.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

        @45RPM

        "Fortunately, they’re all bloody clever - so they pick it up quickly - but that doesn’t alter the fact that, as an employer, I shouldn’t have to be the one who teaches them this stuff."

        This is very much the problem with business, they want it all for free.

        When I was young and the UK manufactured things then those children that were not going to achieve high academic sucesss were given the basics and then business would train them for the jobs the businesses wanted filled. Then the UK destroyed manufactoring and education and threw away apprentiships to kill the trade unions.

        Now anyone seeking higher education is paying for it themselves, if businesses want people trained up so they can make money off them and be able to dictate what they learn then they are going to have to put money into education.

        1. 45RPM Silver badge

          Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

          "This is very much the problem with business, they want it all for free"

          How do you work that out? What I want, what business wants, is for schools and universities to build a solid foundation on which I can add business specific skills and training. And given how much I pay, both as a taxpayer and in direct contribution and funding to my kids education, and how much students pay in tuition fees, I'd say that that's the very least I can expect.

          A graduate with a degree in computing should have a solid understanding of how computers and networks work, C programming (and not some trendy, mainly educational frippery like Haskell), and a solid grounding in mathematics. SQL would be nice, Linux is essential and everything else is a bonus.

          With that foundation they can pick up pretty much everything else on the job.

          1. Law

            Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

            "What I want, what business wants, is for schools and universities to build a solid foundation on which I can add business specific skills and training."

            I don't see that reflected in job advertisements.

            I know most of it driven by HR departments not understanding how it all works, or agencies... But all jobs seem to run similar to this now:

            "Graduate level post: You will be a full stack web developer, 10 years embedded c experience required. Some C# and Java knowledge essential. Mobile development experience desirable. You will be a thought leader and agile evangelist, with experience of teaching others the benefits of XP and scrum. Conference speaking a bonus. £18k + 12 days holiday + bank holidays."

            1. rmason

              Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

              @law

              This. Can't upvote this enough.

              I took a call from a recruiter this week (i'm network admin rather than a coder). They had a position they thought i'd be interested in.

              CCNA/CCND/MCSE were all mentioned in the job description. Years of experience, windows stuff back to server '03 and upto server '16 it went on and on and on.

              They were offering 22-25k "depending on experience". It would have been difficult to build these skills up without having 5-10 years in IT under your belt. 22--25k. That's where a large Nottinghamshire employer puts that sort of experience and training, and that's on top of the degree they would "prefer" candidates to have.

              1. Sir Runcible Spoon

                Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

                I spoke to someone recently in a large firm who was trying to recruit for a fairly specialised role in IT security.

                In order to get the role categorised to allow for a competitive salary he had to tick lots of boxes relating to skills that weren't specifically required (otherwise HR would classify the role as a lower tier and limit the salary on offer).

                So, imagine the surprise when it's hard to get people applying with the right skill-sets.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

            @45RPM

            "And given how much I pay, both as a taxpayer and in direct contribution and funding to my kids education, and how much students pay in tuition fees, I'd say that that's the very least I can expect."

            Everyone with kids pays the same and no, I agree not enough goes towards meaningful higher education. However since everyone with kids in higher education is also is paying the same you then they get an equal vote about what they are going to pay for their children to learn.

            If you want to dictate the syllabus then where is your business contribution?

            How about instead of waiting for the Government to think of your needs instead of their mates, you instead recruit someone to put through their degree.

            Then you get to pick the course and syllabus and you can tie them into a minimum time working for you after they are qualified, especially if you withhold any wages above their loan repayment threshold being saved up by you to pay back their student loan. Your company controls the saved cash and any interest earned so staying with you for the agreed time gets their student loan repaid in a lump at the lowest rate of interest and you not needing to go to court if they are poached by the other companies waiting for someone else to address the issue.

            The fact is that in any subject requiring the range of abilities you are asking for then you are going to need a business interest guild if you want to control the quality and content, then only your certified courses will be recognized as being meaningful for business where you operate

        2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

          This is very much the problem with business, they want it all for free.

          Sorry, if the subjects are unlearned or not though, fuck them, that's not the CV I was looking for. There is space for people ready to do menial tasks.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

            "Sorry, if the subjects are unlearned or not though, fuck them, that's not the CV I was looking for. "

            So basic English not a requirement then?

    5. Nick Z

      Good teachers don't have enough students

      Perhaps the problem is that good teachers don't have enough students, rather than students not having enough good teachers.

      I've been studying computer programming at school and taking online course from a website called udemy.com at the same time. And my online courses definitely beat any courses I've taken at my college.

      For one thing, learning from videos is more effective than learning from lectures. Because in a classroom lecture, the instructor has limited time to cover his material. He goes fast. Some, or even many students make mistakes and fall behind, when they try to code together with the instructor.

      The problem is multi-tasking. When you constantly need to switch your attention between the classroom screen and your computer screen and listen to the instructor talking at the same time, then this in itself leads to mistakes and confusion.

      But learning from videos online has none of these problems. Because you can pause a video any time you want and learn it at your own pace.

      Some of my instructors at udemy.com have graduate degrees in computer science. Some are from Cambridge and some are from Oxford. And one of my instructors there had a count of over 125 000 students for one of his courses. Their courses are broken up into many videos. And each video has a separate discussion group, where people can ask questions and get answers.

      I think teaching computer programming in a classroom is a wrong way to do it. Because computer programming requires the kind of teaching and learning that works best online.

    6. R3sistance

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      Honestly, most of my IT skills are self taught and what training I have had has surpassed the education in IT that I got from school or university. Most of what school or university did was cover things that were either irrelevant or that I already knew, school was all windows based stuff and university had to drop it's Unix course because they couldn't get anybody willing to teach it.

      Now that I do have over 10 years in IT, If you even wanted me to look at another job, you'd need to be talking 40K min, probably more likely 45~50K if you really want me interested.

      There is of course the other issue that since now everybody has to do IT, the IT courses are easier. Heck, when I was 13 I was learning QBasic, making simplistic 3D projections for fun where now you have people going in that don't know the difference between a div or a span in html....

    7. Eponymous Cowherd
      Unhappy

      Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

      A few years ago I was made redundant. I was kind of pissed off with the rat-race, so looked at teaching as an alternative.

      Now I have a CS degree and (at the time) 12 year in industry as a software engineer and sysadmin, so I thought they'd be keen.

      Sorry, Mr Cowherd, I was told, Your English qualification aren't good enough (I have a D in English Language). Never mind the fact that all of the projects and theses I did at uni have probably pushed my standard of English way above GCSE. Never mind that English teachers seem incapable of drilling the difference between "their", "there" and "they're" into students. I didn't have a piece of paper so they weren't interested.

      Now I see my 15 year old daughter being taught Computing by a complete muppet who thinks an Apache server is a waiter in an ethnic restaurant.

      No doubt his English is excellent, though.......

      Still working it IT. Currently a dev for an R&D outfit. Enormous fun, so I'm kind of glad I got turned down for teaching.

      1. Wensleydale Cheese

        Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

        "Sorry, Mr Cowherd, I was told, Your English qualification aren't good enough (I have a D in English Language). Never mind the fact that all of the projects and theses I did at uni have probably pushed my standard of English way above GCSE."

        You're right about the project and thesis work improving your English.

        Having done the standard Maths/Physics/Chemistry up to A-Level, my own English writing skills took a massive leap forward when I did Anthropology as a side course in my first year at Uni. That taught me how to write essays as opposed to lab experiment write-ups.

        Add a collection of English, German and French classics my girlfriend pointed me at, and by the end of my degree course I was far in advance of my O-level English result.

        All of which helped considerably when it came to writing business reports once I got into the outside world.

  2. h4rm0ny
    Paris Hilton

    Isn't C supposed to be average?

    And therefore you would expect less than half to get a B or more?

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

      K&R C was distinctly average. But I'd say C99 was above average, except for the idiotic tgmath.

      What?! Somebody had to pun it. And I'm between builds.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

        How many got C++?

        As were doing puns I thought it would be rude not to.

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

          I might have done but got frightened by the Python

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

            But we started with B, then C and now have D - the industry is obviously going in the wrong direction

            1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

              Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

              "But we started with B, then C and now have D"

              The mistake, here, was going to D instead of P

        2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

          "As were doing puns I thought it would be rude not to.[C++]"

          I couldn't figure out how to do it with without restarting the C++ is better than C flame war. (It is. Obviously.)

      2. tojb

        Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

        Yes! 50% of students are below average. That is life.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

      Isn't C supposed to be average?

      Depends what you're trying to measure. In my view exam scores shouldn't be set to deliver a normal distribution across each year's cohort. In my opinion, that's very poor thinking, from academics who put their own "let's select the top 5%" interests above the practical needs of employers.

      The most important thing for employers is that the grades should represent the same thing year on year, that individual "X" has achieved a level of competence "N". If improved teaching (or merely state schools aping any "unfair" practices of independent schools) results in rising average grades or changing distribution, that should be a good thing, not a reason for Daily Fail teeth gnashing. Look at the damage that Smeagol Gove has caused in trying to being back the days of Tom Brown, and everything resting on final exams. Obviously the man's been scarred by being a Scottish Tory, and the intellectual inferiority of having a degree in English.

      Now, many will posit that exams ARE easier, and that a B in CompSci isn't worth the paper its written on, but both are separate questions to the distribution of results, and to the fact that improvements SHOULD occur from greater transparency, adoption of best practices, and culling of the weakest teachers.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

        @ledswinger

        Firstly, I agree that grading exams graded by the results of everyone else taking the test is unfair and unrepresentative of ability.

        I will add though that creating meaningful exam questions requires a level of understanding higher than the level being tested, no matter how you grade the results. In otherwords for meaningful tests you need people who have a much higher level of understanding in that subject than the people taking the tests. Here is where it all falls down in the UK, anyone with the level required to write tests is classed as being too expensive to employ in education.

        If you want high level employees for business then you are going to have to spend money training them up so they can teach and create meaningful exams.

        If you want them cheap then you are going to have to keep paying into education for decades.

        Importing high level people changes nothing because the best are not going to be employed in education they are going to be grabbed by businesses desperate to compete with the rest of the world. However since these same businesses are unwilling to pay to train even their own staff the imports are not going to be teaching anyone and so business has to keep importing ability that degrades over time. Degrading because ground breaking in the field is being done elsewhere.

        The situation we find ourselves in now down to the decades of short sighted and narrow minded business practices destroying what used to be the best education in the free world, perhaps it is time to seperate education from the abuses of business and instead return to viewing education as being the country's investment in the future that it should be.

        To business, if you want high level people then you need to pay for their education, if you want the price to go down over time then you are going to have to pay for research in education as well.

      2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

        "In my view exam scores shouldn't be set to deliver a normal distribution across each year's cohort."

        That's more or less what GCSEs were supposed to do but instead we just got 3 decades of grade inflation so they've given up and the new scheme boils down to percentiles. (The actual rules are stupidly complex, but the constraints at top, middle and bottom of the 1-9 scale mean that you'd need a truly perverse population to deviate far from a simple percentile arrangement. It looks very much like a committee designed the rules so that they could reintroduce percentiles without the arts graduates noticing.)

        1. Mark Dempster

          Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

          "In my view exam scores shouldn't be set to deliver a normal distribution across each year's cohort."

          In my view, however, that's exactly how it should work. As a population we are NOT getting more intelligent on an annual basis. And as the article describes, teaching isn't improving either. So the only explanation for consistent grade rises year after year is that the subject is getting easier.

          At the school 2 of my kids went to they were allowed - even encouraged - to keep resubmitting their coursework multiple times in order to address the comments the teacher had made, and improve their marks. Followed to a logical conclusion there was no excuse for any pupil not to get an A* in every subject. The consequence of which is, employers/colleges have no way to differentiate between the new applicants based on academic ability.

          You don't get that in an exam, which makes it a better test of a child's real ability. And while I accept that some don't thrive under exam pressure, they probably wouldn't do under pressure at work either for the same reason. And in order to prevent distortion of results by the exams being judged to be harder/easier than normal this year, you work out the grades based on the fact that the top X% get the top grade, the next Y% get the second-best grade, and so on.

          There are very few things that the tory government has done that I approve of, but this is one example.

          1. BlokeOnMotorway

            Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

            "As a population we are NOT getting more intelligent on an annual basis."

            The Flynn Effect. Take a look at it.

          2. Wensleydale Cheese

            Re: Isn't C supposed to be average?

            "You don't get that in an exam, which makes it a better test of a child's real ability. And while I accept that some don't thrive under exam pressure, they probably wouldn't do under pressure at work either for the same reason."

            I respectfully disagree there, Mark. The motivational factors at play in a work environment were a lot better for me than those in a full time school environment.

            Apart from obvious things like pay rises and the chance of a company car, there was immediate feedback from satisfied business users. Putting concrete solutions in place was satisfying in a way that exam results could never be,

  3. samzeman
    Flame

    I wish I had the willpower to do a proper rant about the new GCSE grading system. It's complete BS. Terrible idea. I don't even really know why, I just really, really don't like it. My main problem with it is that it seems entirely unnecessary. Every new Education Secretary thinks they know a new /revolutionary idea/ that I know first hand just makes it harder for students to know what the fuck is going on, and honestly? Students are pretty disorientated as it is, even without the system changing like pan's labyrinth.

    Apparently I did have the willpower.

    1. h4rm0ny

      Have you ever wondered why there are so many diet books? It's because everyone would rather hear about some new easy idea that will get them what they want, rather than exercise more and eat less.

      Ideas are cheap. Effort and resource are not.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Rant

      My blood pressure was raised by the journalist who let some talking head get away with saying that 'it will all bed down in 5 years' and everyone will understand the new system.

      The chance of any part of the education system getting 5 years of stability without some half-baked clever reorganisation being dropped from upon high is about 1 in a million. In 5 years time they will be smugly congratulating themselves on their new colour based grading - based on rainbows, with ultraviolet as the highest grade,orange as a pass and infra-red to allow us to discriminate the PPE graduates-to-be.

      1. B*stardTintedGlasses

        Re: Rant

        I have a feeling (and hope) that is a "Paranoia" reference.

        ALL HAIL FRIEND COMPUTER

    3. Mark Dempster

      Re:Fewer than half GCSE computing students got a B or higher this year

      >I wish I had the willpower to do a proper rant about the new GCSE grading system. It's complete BS. Terrible idea. I don't even really know why, I just really, really don't like it. My main problem with it is that it seems entirely unnecessary. Every new Education Secretary thinks they know a new /revolutionary idea/ that I know first hand just makes it harder for students to know what the fuck is going on, and honestly? Students are pretty disorientated as it is, even without the system changing like pan's labyrinth.<

      What's so hard about the higher number being the better result? Seems pretty intuitive to me. And it has the bonus that if you want an overall summary of a pupil's exam results, you just need to add them all together and have a single number - which incorporates both the number of subjects taken and their final grade.

  4. m0rt

    "These concerns were echoed by Martin Golloghy, the director of the SAP University Alliances programme in the UK and Ireland, which links up universities and high schools with SAP experts and resources."

    *shudders*

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      99% of the recruits will be accountants.

  5. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    IT snobbery

    "Around 60 per cent of ICT teachers have no degree in an ICT-related subject,"

    That annoyed me. Ditto the woman on the radio this morning suggesting that because open source contributors don't have PhDs they are "hobby programmers".

    I have zero qualifications in computing yet earn my living from it.

    Signed, another disgruntled graduate of the 8-bit micro school of coding.

    1. ARGO

      Re: IT snobbery

      My mother used to be an IT manager, and started her career in the days before there was such a thing as a computer science degree.

      She wouldn't touch most CS graduates with a bargepole - an exception was made for OU graduates, but they were generally self taught and got the paperwork later.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: IT snobbery

        @argo

        Was your mother qualified in Computer Science then or was she just another Business Studies graduate who managed to get into computing when they changed the name to IT?

        The whole reason IMHO we are in this mess is because of Business Studies graduates intentionally pizzing in everyone else's pool during the '90s to make themselves appear useful for something other than just placating ignorant upper management.

        1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

          Comprehension test

          1. @anon asks, "Was your mother qualified in Computer Science..."

          @argo writes, "My mother...started her career in the days before there was such a thing as a computer science degree."

          Therefore, I think, we can safely deduce that, no, she wasn't qualified in Computer Science.

          2. @anon continues speculating about things "Business Studies graduates" did "during the '90s".

          There were most definitely Computer Science degrees in the 90s---I used to tutor a CS undergrad on the side---so I think we can say argo's mum predates the 90s, probably by decades.

          So I think, anon, we'll award you an /A*/, where the * matches zero times.

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: Comprehension test

            >There were most definitely Computer Science degrees in the 90s

            There were most definitely Computer Science BSc degrees in the late 1970's in the UK - got the piece of paper to prove it...

            1. Wensleydale Cheese

              Re: Comprehension test

              "There were most definitely Computer Science BSc degrees in the late 1970's in the UK - got the piece of paper to prove it..."

              There were a few in the early 70s, but as far as I recall, only in places with a strong scientifc/engineering emphasis like Loughborough.

              At my university, the computing centre was under control of the Maths department.

        2. ARGO

          Re: IT snobbery

          Depends how you define qualified.

          Did she have a bit of paper? No.

          Did she have over 30 years experience as a programmer, systems analyst and then manager? Yes.

          When she was an analyst she also lectured at the local poly - something that stopped when they became a university and decided all their lecturers had to have bits of paper :-/

    2. John G Imrie

      Re: IT snobbery

      I left school at 16 with 3 O levels. I've spent the last 30 years of my life working in IT.

      PS I don't work for Capita, you can't blame their crap code on me ::-)

    3. MrJOD

      Re: IT snobbery

      She was really awful.

      Ranted about sexism and lack of equality representation in technology and ended with "and women are better programmers". Pot, meet kettle.

    4. Law

      Re: IT snobbery

      "I have zero qualifications in computing yet earn my living from it."

      Up voted you because of course you're correct, but I think you're the exception, not the rule. The norm is my auntie in law, who's been teaching gchq ict for decades (mostly word processing, but now the other stuff). She can't even secure her own WiFi router, never mind explain how it's different to 4g, or even ethernet. She also forwards cool messages like this on Facebook : "don't accept friend requests from anon1234, he's a hacker and has a computer connected to your account. Once you accept his friend request he'll take over your computer and empty your bank account. Forward to all your friends." :(

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