Lynne Dagg

An opportunity to share research in a friendly environment.

In November 1969 the Sunderland Echo pronounced "County Hall enters the space race". We are often assured that computers at this time were in their infancy. But there is evidence that Higher Education worked with schools to introduce computing years earlier. A later article in the same month reported that a local school (in Sunderland) had a Computer Club and that Computing was on the curriculum within the school in the sixth form and had regular visits to the Polytechnic Computers and this research has revealed evidence of pupils having at least visited computers in the early 1960s. Although such links may have been rare, the introduction of computing into the curriculum came about alongside support for the subject by Higher Education. Most of the articles I have read suggest that computing links between HE and school happened in later decades but the evidence I have found refutes this. The aim of the research is to consider the parallels and differences between the early introduction of computing into schools and the changes of 2014. Over the years the movement away from computing and towards IT was less related to higher education. The catalyst to curriculum reform in 2014 which reintroduced computing into the school curriculum may appear to be led by government but there was strong influence from Higher Education Computing Departments. Again, support was provided by Universities to schools in developing the subject for their pupils. The presentation will discuss the parallels between the introduction of computing into the curriculum as a STEM subject both in the early years of Computing and in the more recent changes of 2014. Will this 'new' curriculum really help to develop a greater quantity of computing graduates in future years in the manner envisaged or are there lessons which could be learned from the past?