The British Computing Society(BCS)has made the first draft of the reformed ICT curriculum available to the public.
Available on the BCS website,the first draft has been unveiled to enable the BCS and the Royal Academy of Engineering(RAEng)to ask for feedback from the education community.
Earlier this year,education secretary Michael Gove announced that the GCSE ICT was to be scrapped.It was announced that a new computer science based curriculum would replace the old ICT programme in 2014.
The document was requested by the Department for Education(DfE),which instructed the BCS and RAEng to work with a several school teachers,and representatives from education bodies to coordinate the draft.
In a statement on the BCS website,the DfE said:"This initial draft is not in any way endorsed by the DfE,and represents the expert advice of a working party that coordinated input from a range of stakeholders."
After feedback has been received,the BCS is expected to submit a revised draft to the DfE at the end of November.
More on the ICT curriculum
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The BCS is only looking for feedback in regards to the wording of the document,instead of inviting teachers or the IT industry to share their views and opinions on what the new ICT curriculum should include.
The BCS said,in a statement:"We welcome comments that provide concrete suggestions of changes to the wording of the draft,such as'change X to Y','add X to Y'.Please note due to time constraints,we will focus on feedback that provides specific suggestions on the content of the document."
As it stands,the draft outlines the skills that children should possess between the ages of five to 16,which is the equivalent of key stages one to four(KS1-KS4).Bullet points are made for each key stage,outlining skills in computer science and digital literacy.
The DfE held a roundtable meeting last week with key figures from the IT industry and education arena to discuss the document.Companies in attendance included Facebook,Apple,Microsoft and Google in addition to school inspection body Ofsted.
