Half of English schools fail to offer Computer Science at GCSE, claims Royal Society report

Pupils being deprived of opportunity to learn computer science, warns Royal Society

More than half of schools in England are failing to offer pupils access to the revamped GCSE Computer Science course, a report had revealed today.

According to the Royal Society, schools are failing to give young people the chance to learn some of the most valuable skills they will need in order to prosper in an increasingly technology-dominated world.

It is calling on the government to do more to ensure pupils are able to learn important skills such as programming and computer algorithms, alongside typical subjects like maths and English.

England is only meeting 68 per cent of its recruitment targets for computing teacher training courses, which is even lower than Physics and Classics

The report highlights the fact that the government needs to spend at least £60m in computing education over the next five years in order to close the digital skills gap.

Fifty-four per cent of English schools don't currently offer Computer Science as a GCSE subject, and only 175,000 pupils in the country are actually undertaking it.

Bournemouth is the city with the highest uptake of Computer Science pupils pupils (23 per cent), followed by Kensington & Chelsea (five per cent), Blackburn (five per cent) and City of London (four per cent).

England is only meeting 68 per cent of its recruitment targets for computing teacher training courses, which is even lower than Physics and Classics. And only one-in-five of computer science pupils are female.

Professor Steve Furber said: "The rate at which technology is transforming the workplace means that we live in a world where many primary schoolchildren will work in technology-based roles that do not yet exist, so it is essential that future generations can apply digital skills with confidence.

"For pupils to thrive, we need knowledgeable, highly skilled teachers. However, computing teachers have told us that they feel the government rushed in a new curriculum without giving them the support or money to deliver it."

He added: "The report paints a bleak picture in England, which meets only 68 per cent of its computing teacher recruitment targets and where, as a result, one-in-two schools don't offer Computer Science at GCSE, a crucial stage of young people's education.

"Overhauling the fragile state of our computing education will require an ambitious, multi-pronged approach. We need the government to invest significantly more to support and train 8,000 secondary school computing teachers to ensure pupils have the skills and knowledge needed for the future."

Dale Peters, an analyst at TechMarketView, commented: "Teachers are being asked to teach an unfamiliar subject and there are too few teachers with the requisite skills to teach the curriculum.

"The government only reached 68 per cent of its recruitment target for computing teachers in 2016-17. We know that computer science skills are in high demand in industry, so its unsurprising that far fewer Computer Science graduates choose to enter teaching than in other subjects, but it's not sustainable.

"Computer Science remains an overwhelmingly male-dominated subject and workforce — at GCSE, just 20 per cent of pupils taking computing are female.

"As we have discussed before, if we are to meet the current and future skills requirements we need to achieve a better gender balance in the subject. Industry must do all it can to address this issue and improve computing education in the UK."