Google's donation of 15,000 Raspberry Pi computers and last week's decision by Education Secretary Michael Gove to add computer science to the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) are a mere "diversion" from the UK's real problems in IT education, the chair of Support for Education and Training (SET), Bob Harrison, has told Computing.
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Responding to Gove's announcement at the British Education Training and Technology (BETT) show in London last week, Harrison said: "This time last year, Michael Gove stood up at this conference and told the ICT teachers in our country that they were doing a bad job, and that the ICT teaching is dull and boring.
"Unfortunately, that didn't correspond with evidence produced by Ofsted, which said that in over two-thirds of the schools, especially primary schools, the teaching of ICT was ‘good' to ‘outstanding' in the majority of schools.
"It begs the question, ‘Where was he coming from, and why was he saying that?'," Harrison said.
"The background to that is the Royal Society report on computing in schools, which was called - there's a bit of a clue in the title here - Shut Down or Restart. And then you look at who paid for it: Microsoft, Google and a dozen or so computer science departments of universities who had seen their enrolement for computer science degrees plummet to about a third of what they were 10 years ago.
"It begs the question, ‘What was their agenda?'," said Harrison.
Harrison told Computing he believes the "EBacc stuff and the Raspberry Pi stuff is a diversion from what the really crucial issue is: can we ensure that the vast majority of our young people have sufficient levels of digital literacy, and enthusiasm to continue their learning, so that they can develop their skills to be effective digital citizens and workers in a digital world?"
Chairman of NAACE (National Association of Advisors for Computers in Education), Miles Berry, echoed Harrison's fears: "The problem for many is by making league tables about EBacc results, it's sending out a message that an academic education is the only one we're interested in measuring or value, and I don ‘t think it should be like that.
"Yes, computer science is an academic discipline, but there are whole swathes of IT that are about path skills and creativity - there are bits of the subject that look an awful lot like the arts. And the EBacc doesn't reward points for that."
Harrison believes that the current crop of teachers are "not capable of bridging the gap" to nurture "digital citizens", rather than simply achieving academic results.
He is also concerned about financial and practical assistance to achieve these new goals from a government that only 12 months ago said the IT education sector was broken.
"The key question I'd put back to the ministers is: how are you going to help support the schools that you've now challenged who, incidentally, 12 months ago you told were rubbish?" asked Harrison.
"You dissed them, now you're saying ‘We want you to deliver this. Oh, and by the way, there's no money to help you do it'."
Harrison said there is "a red light flagging" that puts the DfE and its advisory board, on which he sits, "in danger of achieving the exact opposite of what we set out to do, because we can't rely on the good will of teachers in the Computing for Schools network, who receive very little funding and have very little time.
"How are we going to bridge the gap between the children needing to be taught, and what the system is capable of delivering?" asked Harrison.
Berry believes teachers should be encouraged to "make stuff".
"Get them making things, making the resources they can use to teach this, together with other teachers. Let's get teachers coding. I'd love to see them make something useful for the children in their class."
