Decline in CS in Scottish Schools: CAS-Scotland 2014 Report #CSEdWeek

The 2014 report from Computing At School (CAS) Scotland is out on the status of computer science education nationwide (see the report here).  The results are remarkable and distressing.  CAS Scotland succeeded at getting computer science to be a recognized subject, with the goal of replacing the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) curriculum.  However, computer science education in schools has declined dramatically.  Roger McDermott, who pointed out the report to me, is wondering if the push to improve the rigor of computing in schools may have led to the decline.

Some of the key findings (all of the points below are quotes from the report):

• There has been a drop of 14% in Computing Science teachers over the last two years. Overall the number of Computing Science teachers in Scotland has gone down from 866 in 2007 to 773 in 2012 and to 663 in 2014. Low uptake, staff leaving and a need to reduce staffing were reasons given by some Local Authorities for the reduction. The number of schools without any Computing Science teachers has gone up slightly from 7.6% in 2012 (27 schools) to 12 % in 2014.
• One school mentioned that one factor was Universities don’t require Higher Computing Science as an entry requirement:
  

  “[We] stopped offering certificate computing over ten years ago. The Head Teacher decided that with reducing staffing, low uptake by pupils and the fact that the higher was not required for further and higher education entry that certificate classes were not viable.”

• Another area of concern is the lack of Computing Science teachers. There are currently not enough Computing Science teachers to address demand. Ten local authorities out of the 32 said that they had problems recruiting Computing Science teachers.
• Many schools claim to be delivering Computing Science outcomes across the curriculum, but there is evidence of confusion with ICT skills.
• The target for PGDE Computing in Scotland (the path to becoming a CS teacher in Scotland — see this link for an explanation) this year was 25 students (with a maximum cap set at 42 places). To date, 20 offers have been accepted for courses at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.

The problems that CAS-Scotland is facing are quite similar to ones we’re facing the United States:  Too few CS teachers, too few teachers interested in becoming CS teachers, a high drop-out rate among CS teachers (as already seen in ExploringCS), and a lack of value at the University level which influences perception at the high school level.  A mandate to teach computer science in all schools doesn’t make it happen.  Scotland is a smaller country which makes the problem more manageable, and they are already far ahead of the United States in terms of curriculum, teacher preparation programs, and having CS teachers in schools.  (Does anyone else look wistfully at that 12% of schools not teaching CS?  Only 12%?)  We need to watch how Scotland solves these problems, because we might able to use their solutions.