PCPro Clicky

Really looking at it, is this a serious issue? Should we not be thinking about who is capable of doing the courses? I think it's terrible that my female friends doing computer science got/get extra grants for doing IT at A-level and university level.

In the following, I am only speaking from experience and any generalisations I make are observations only based on my experience, which I will admit is limited.
Girls just don't seem interested in IT. In my A-level class most were only interested in learning basic skills so they could go on to do secretary based jobs. The dozen girls on my uni course are all doing computer sclience with business (Business Information Tecnology) and are only interested in how IT can integrate with business, only one has remained a pure computer science student to my knowledge.
As I said, generally, girls don't seem to have an interest in how a processor works or how to program something...

There also seems to be a sharp decline in male students too, according to the graph.

Given my time again I wouldn't have wasted an A Level option on the AQA/Edexcel/OCR (why can't I remember???) course...

I did a Herts Diploma In Computing in 1986 and passed. That is the only computer qualification I have.

Well that degree course seems shatteringly depressingly dull.

In my BTEC ND in 86/87 there was one girl on the course.

In 2005/6 when I was working as a guest lecturer at Augsburg, there was only one girl on my project seminar.

In 2007 there were 2...

There were girls in our class. However, the class broke into two parts: those of us who had computers and could do things with them (most of the boys) and those who had no clue. Those of us who knew stuff didn’t have to stay around for the practical stuff, which was about making a database on an RML 380Z as we were encouraged to do stuff on our own machines. In effect, the divide started then.

And, yes, before you ask - the teacher knew about as much, if not less, than we did. Computers were his hobby - back in the 1980’s this was the case everywhere. His proper subject was biology. Also remember that my school still taught typewriter skills to girls because they were all going to be secretaries...

Having done most of an A-level in computing (in 98-00, just before they changed to AS levels) I can categorically state that it's a bit of a rubbish course anyway. I would even question it's relevancy in today's rapidly evolving technological world. Does it matter that girls aren't doing it. Not really. As long as they're learning something and are interested in it, I don't think it matters what it is.

We were expected to include floppy disks in a list of virus-distribution methods two years ago...

My experience is similar to Paulzolo's doing an A level. Around the mid eighties, networked RM CP/M boxes that were painfully slow compiling Pascal which we needed to use for the project (They were really terminals to the RM server in the corner which did the compiling which didn't help). I had just acquired a nice little Epson machine and ended up going out and paying rather a lot for a copy of Pascal to do the project at home. It was at a college and the teacher was an IT person I believe but he was crap. So was the course. Even then when things were still changing slowly compared to now the content was very old mostly - at a guess more relevant to the mid-late seventies than the mid eighties. Virtually nothing about PC's and home computers and no consideration of future developments opening up and so on.

Later, until a couple of years ago, I also took people through their IT NVQ's (both user ones and support ones) and to be honest they weren't to great either, but not as bad as the A level was by a mile. Mind you some of the trainees had pretty strange ideas of what they could do with and without a VQ. How do you tell someone without an once of design talent and training in their bodies that they have absolutely no chance getting into games and web design however good they are with computers (and none of them were much good with computers to boot)? One of the best trainees I had, actually really more of a work experience thing, was a woman. Late twenties mature CS degree with the sense to know that had taught her nothing worth knowing about the practical side of things and she was having trouble getting work but the dole had the sense to talk to us about her getting some practical experience when she asked. So she got stuck into fixing hardware, installing software, getting machines on the network, even doing a Linux install including getting the DNS server working right so we had a backup to the sole Windows server doing everything but mail to keep the network functional if the windows box went down. Four months later she got a good job. A few months later my employer went bust. I heard later my dumb boss on the IT side went to work under her and lasted two weeks before she fired him. Loved hearing that and was not surprised. She had her feet on the ground, learned fast and learned well. Sadly most of my trainees otherwise were none of that.

Richard.

So there we have it. Computing A-level is pointless. Computers are tools. They should be used in all relevant subjects as such. It seems irrelevant to me that they continue to have their own, dedicated course, when they are simply a means to help learn other things.

Why not? A lot of banking software requires a floppy disk to store the keys! (Don't ask)

And where I currently work, a lot of floppy disks are still used. Whether it is a floppy disk, CD, DVD or a USB stick it doesn't make much difference. Removable media, it should be a blanket category...

When I did my CSE, the teacher announced he would be taking the exam with us! There were two of us in the class who knew about Commodores. We ended up answering all the hardware questions directly, the teacher just pointed the other pupils in our direction, instead of attempting to answer the questions himself!

At A-level? Or altogether?
If you stop them being their own dedicated subject altogether then you'll lose developers, etc...
Although all of the contect of my A-level is now pretty much worthless to me, it did get me into IT, I'd never touched a computer properly before then (onyl for a few games and writing a few Word documents).

I can see that you could do away with IT altogether at primary and secondary school. English should teach how to use a word processor well, use reviewing tools, etc. Maths should include spreadsheet work. D&T and art would show you computer graphics and computer design. Geography could teach modeling on a computer.
Currently (well, between 1999 and 2007), this doesn't happen, it's all down to the IT department.
We don't have a "team skills" lesson twice a week, the skill is encorperated into other subjects...

Computers are more than tools, maybe not to the many, but to the few they are fascinating objects, whether you like the complexity of processor architecture or how the operating system shares out memory and maps it back to the real stuff, it's a small box of amasement. And then there are the huge networks, loads of little boxes of amasement all stuck together in a huge net of amasement.
Actually, I'll take that back, computers are a tool, though not like a hammer, more like how language is a tool.

Interesting. I meant at A-level. Of course people will want to study programming and web dev etc. But isn't even that not strictly "Computing". I just think it made sense when "in the future computers would be everywhere" i.e. the 80s and 90s. But now, computers are everywhere

Michel de Montaigne thought that knowledge was only useful if it was applicable to the studying individual's life. Knowledge for knowledge sake was pointless. I'm not saying I agree entirely, or that his views are entirely applicable, but he does raise an interesting point. What's relevant to our lives is how computers enrich and compliment them, not computers in and of themselves.

But I suppose technically accurate

I remember a mate of mine was called in by the examiners to explain to them the code his sister had used in her project as they didn't have a clue if or how it would work.

Of course projects at that point had to have the code printed out for the examiners not compiled and working