This is a blog I wrote for the NCCE where I work as the Secondary Computing Leadership Specialist PDL. It will appear on the NCCE blog here shortly.
If they remember nothing else, I’m sure my former pupils will recall my rallying cry for the Computer Science GCSE when their options choices came around: “we need good computer scientists like you on the side of the humans when the robot apocalypse comes!” I would declare, only half-joking. It worked, too, in my five years as HoD at an inner-city school I saw option numbers climb to record levels. I even achieved a 30% female cohort, through a range of efforts from ensuring representation in displays and resources, making the learning relevant, and a relentless “whisper campaign” of praise and encouragement: countering girls’ tendency to underestimate their ability and feel they don’t “belong” in computer science (see here). (Thrillingly, all the girls in that cohort achieved GCSE grade 6 or above, so the moral is: if you want good results, encourage more girls!) I also picked up a confused and disjointed curriculum, and set about re-engineering it, replacing my schemes of work, over a couple of years, with the Teach Computing Curriculum (TCC). I was able to trust the research-informed progression framework that underpins the TCC and cite this in my curriculum documentation – the ubiquitous Intent, Implementation and Impact docs we all wrote for the new Ofsted regime!
Today the TCC contains nearly 300 lessons in over 40 units for KS3 and 4, so there really is a TCC unit for every need, and there are now “Secondary question banks” for assessment, available as Google Forms and Microsoft Forms which you can just duplicate and use as your own, editing as necessary. I’m a big fan of good quality Multiple Choice Quizzes (MCQs), as they can take a lot of strain out of retrieval practice, and formative and summative assessment. Combined with some longer – but less frequent – written assessment you can get a good handle on progress without too much traditional marking. There are thousands more questions available for free at diagnosticquestions.com/quantum, and I’m also a seasoned user of SmartRevise from Craig’n’Dave, which offers longer-form exam-style questions with self- and AI-marking features.
Teaching A-level, I found Isaac Computer Science came in really handy. What I needed was a “MOOC” or online source of accurate, exam-board-specific content I could just point the students at for self-study and revision. Now expanded to cover GCSE content, IsaacComputerScience.org does just that. It also contains many hundreds of practice questions which can be organised into “gameboards”. I would create a gameboard every week on the topic we were studying, and use the results to re-teach the bits on which they performed worst. I’ve no doubt this cycle of self-marking quizzes and re-teaching (along with other deliberate practice techniques, I’m a big fan of Adam Boxer’s concept of “ratio”) helped me to record GCSE and A-level results in recent years. For A-level students, Isaac comes with regular “student booster” events aligned to the content, while Isaac Teacher events have now been merged into the regular Teach Computing course catalogue here.
I completed the Computer Science Accelerator (now called the Subject Knowledge Certificate) a few years back, then the Teach Secondary Computing certificate, and I strongly recommend doing both of these if you are a subject leader, courses are free and subsidised for all state schools and really affordable for private institutions, find out more here. So impressed was I with the NCCE courses, I completed Professional Development Leader training and joined a computing hub as a PDL, and here I am today as your national specialist in Secondary Leadership! The hubs are amazing, I recommend you get in touch with a local hub and find out what they can do for you, including advice, needs analysis, bespoke support and the loan of equipment.
I’ve spoken a lot about pedagogy, it fascinates me, and I really enjoyed the Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, and the follow-up Big Book of Computing Content published by the Raspberry Pi foundation, and these are must-reads for Computing subject leads. Maybe you could organise some CPD for your team around one of the articles? If you’re pressed for time, there are Pedagogy Quick Reads on the NCCE website here, which all helped me switch to PRIMM programming and improve my explanations with Semantic Waves with excellent results.
Finally, all of the above topics will be on the agenda The Big Computing Leadership Conference, on December 14th 2023 at Oxford Brookes University. Myself and Primary Computing Leadership Specialist, Phil Wickins, are joined by a star-studded cast of speakers and exhibitors. It’s your one-stop shop for all things a computing leader might need. You will also get trained in the Computing Quality Framework for free on the day, enabling you to go back and take immediate action to develop your department.
For more information about the specialist hub and how to get in touch see our website here, while the agenda for the Big Conference and how to book are here. See you on 14th December, but only if you want to be on the side of humans in the coming robot apocalypse!
Best wishes,
Alan Harrison.
How to Teach Computer Science 