Computer science as a school subject

Abstract

Computer science is one of the richest, most exciting disciplines on the planet, yet any teenager will tell you that ICT (as it is called in UK schools --- "information and communication technology") is focused almost entirely on the use and application of computers, and in practice covers nothing about how computers work, nor programming, nor anything of the discipline of computer science as we understand it. Over the last two decades, computing at school has drifted from writing adventure games on the BBC Micro to writing business plans in Excel.