British Students May Experience Two-Year Gap in Technology Instruction

U.K. schools are scrapping their Information and Computer Technologies curriculum, or ICT, in favor of a curriculum more centered on computer science. While the new curriculum doesn’t roll out until 2014, British schools will discontinue ICT in September of 2012. This could mean two years without technology education for many British students.

“Some will leap straight into teaching computer science while others will carry on teaching something like the existing ICT curriculum,” writes David Bradshaw, a blogger for IDT. “Others may simply drop ICT altogether, in order to direct resources to areas where they are regulated and measured.”

British Education Secretary Michael Gove has called the current ICT curriculum “de-motivating and dull,” according to the BBC. Gove called on universities and businesses to participate in creating the new computer science curriculum.

“Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word or Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations,” said Gove in January, when the new computer science curriculum was announced.

However, the question remains: What will students learn about technology in the meantime? A directive from the Department of Education has empowered teachers to construct their own ICT curriculum in the meantime, but concerns about teacher preparedness and training remain.

For instance, the new computer science curriculum will focus more on Web design elements than on word processing and spreadsheets, but teachers who have worked with the ICT curriculum for years may not possess the skills that they need to evolve their curriculum on their own.

“ICT curriculum would be based on the skills level of the teacher rather than the ability and interests of the pupils,” noted a government consultation document.

IDT’s Bradshaw has called on corporations to recognize the importance of developing technology skills for the future workforce. He has encouraged leaders to write to their representatives in Parliament and to step in and develop stopgap curriculum solutions. He has suggested apprenticeship programs as well as after-school programs for kids developed by private companies.

“You therefore need to take an interest in what it going on, and apply what influence you have to try and improve the outcome,” Bradshaw concludes.