Royal Society Report on CS in English Schools: The Challenge of Reaching Everyone

The new report from the UK’s Royal Society is fascinating and depressing. More than half of school don’t offer CS. Because the largest schools do offer CS, 70% of English students are at a school that offer CS — but they’re still not getting into CS classes. Only 1 in 5 CS students are female. The Royal Society recommends a tenfold increase in funding.

We have heard about some of these demographics before (see the Roehampton report and BBC coverage). Here in the US, we’re also talking about dramatically increasing funding (see blog post here about the $1.3B funding from White House and Tech industry).  Are the US and England on the same paths in CS? Is there any reason to expect things to be different, or better, in the US?

A report by the UK’s national academy of sciences finds that more than half of English schools do not offer GCSE Computer Science, leaving too many young people without the chance to learn critically important programming and algorithm skills at a crucial stage of their education.

Unless the government urgently invests £60m in computing education over the next five years – a tenfold increase from current levels that puts it on par with support for maths and physics – an entire generation may never unlock the full potential of new technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Key findings from the report include:

• 54% of English schools do not offer Computer Science GCSE

• 30% of English GCSE pupils attend a school that does not offer Computer Science GCSE – the equivalent of 175,000 pupils each year

• Bournemouth leads England with the highest uptake of Computer Science GCSE (23% of all pupils), with Kensington & Chelsea (5%), Blackburn (5%) and City of London coming last (4%)

• England meets only 68% of its recruitment target for entries into computing teacher training courses, lower than Physics and Classics

• Only 1 in 5 Computer Science GCSE pupils are female

Source: Invest tenfold in computing in schools to prepare students for digital world, says Royal Society