As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!
As you can probably tell from the title, this isn't going to be a traditional post where I write a bit and share a resource. This is going to be the type of post where I write a lot and don't share a resource (sorry).
Now that I think about it, I've made a similar post about how terrible the H046/H446 specification for the new linear course is. This one isn't going to be anything specific about OCR or even A level Computer Science, but computer science education in general i.e. from KS1-KS5.
I'm pretty sure that this is a problem in many countries (not just in the UK), but I can only speak from my own experience so I'll only be talking about England in particular. Anyway, enough chit chat, let's get down to the question. Why is computer science education so bad?
The obvious reason is (or maybe not so obvious) that computer science jobs in industry are extremely well paid. We're talking 6 figure salaries depending on what your role is and in what company. Big tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. are tough to get into, but the rewards it brings is what attracts most graduates.
Not so long ago, you could check the starting salaries of every single degree course in the UK after 6 months of graduation based on official government statistics. Unistats, allowed such a possibility but now for some reason it doesn't.
Anyway, I used to do a lot of research back in Year 10 and 11 about degree course statistics using Unistats because it was really reliable. It still is, but a lot of the information that was available isn't anymore and I hope it comes back soon.
Without going on a tangent, allow me to summarise what I found to be particularly interesting. The top courses for the highest starting salaries were... you guessed it computer science. And if my memory serves, degrees from Cambridge, UCL and Imperial had starting salaries of 40k. Yes, £40000.
Obviously, you don't need me to tell you where new graduates can get this kind of money (let me give you a hint: it's not from teaching jobs). So let's make sense of this data in context of the question.
A person with a computer science degree will most likely work in industry as the jobs are better and let's face it, why wouldn't you go for those jobs after working so hard for your degree? Don't get me wrong, some people go straight into teaching and other jobs but the fact is the vast majority of computer scientists don't.
That's how the problem arises, there's simply not enough computer science teachers and the teachers already teaching it aren't very good at it (in my experience anyway). Another common problem or myth shall I say is that being good at a discipline doesn't make you a good teacher of said discipline.
My old school (which is in the top 5% of the most socioeconomically deprived schools in the UK) didn't even have a Computer Science teacher until I asked the head of sixth form at the start of Year 12 to do A level Computer Science.
A level Computer Science also always has the worst pass rates every year and that just sums it all up really. I know there's a lot of contributing factors to why computer science education is so bad and I guess I've just added myself to the long list of complainers because I can't too do much about it (except what I'm already doing with this blog which isn't much mind you).
Anyway, I don't have much more to say and even if I did it wouldn't solve the problem so I think I'll just end it here.
Hope this helps!
No comments:
Post a Comment