Hallejulah.
We have a break through.
Education has occurred.
Why though, couldn't you take that on board earlier?
Lets keep the momentum going for a moment though - also take on board the fact that a large number if teachers aren't equipped to deliver this material and would require time and money that we don't have in order to train for it.
As Paul said, maybe the next generation to come through.
Right now, let's focus on the stuff that does matter and genuinely has a measurable affect on your child's education, like reading, writing, mathematics and emotional well being, class numbers and staffing levels.
Then it may make sense to teach a lesson for the benefit of the three children that might be likely to carry on in the field.

A Sun reader by any chance?


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I don't see how we have a problem any more.
Only some teachers need to understand the topic - the others won't have to teach it. That's ok though because it's normal.
If it's going into the curriculum then it's something the kids can reasonably be expected to understand (even if we are giving up on their teachers).
All the subjects at primary school go together in a nice shapely bundle of interlocking gooey goodness, therefore a properly taught ICT lesson with algorithms will do the same and has no negative impact on reading or maths or emotional well being.

And who are any of us to decide what skills 30 children ought to learn on the basis of what we think they will or will not do with them years from now? That's just mean spirited, unimaginative Gradgrindian determinism.
Empirically we can expect most of them to stop learning French before they find any kind of use for it.
Statistically very few of them will go on to serious study of biology.
And we all know that our wretched offspring are all becoming so fat that PE serves only to strengthen the upper bodies of the two who will find employment rolling the other 28 from dinner trough to toilet and back again 20 years from now.

Incidentally, I read somewhere that the best (or possibly the most improved) primary school in the country teaches philosophy to the kids (I'm reasonably sure I read that in a philosophy magazine). If that turns out to be cause rather than correlation, will we have to go through this thread again replacing 'algorithm' with 'syllogism'?

No, no. The Daily Sketch, old boy. I take Picture Post at the weekends.

I expect this is what will happen. A school will get one or two teachers good at the subject and will rotate those through all the classes. How and if that happens will be down to the foresight of the head teacher.


Given what I was taught in what was very embryonic IT classes when I was at school (it was called “Computers” and was run by the head of biology) - the skills I learned then (basically typing in databases on an RML 380Z) as well as the BBC Basic I learned myself - are pretty much redundant now. Maybe a foundation, but not much more.

If you are going to be teaching some kind of coding or coding practice, you really need to lay the foundations of ordered and logical instructions at primary level, and expect that secondary schools do more real world software engineering as the children there will be closer to the point where they will be seeking employment, and therefore need skills which are more current. How this happens depends on the nitty gritty of what the National Curriculum requires, how Ofsted interprets it, and whether it features in the league tables. I would say that pretty much every school has beady eyes on the last two criteria mentioned here and work towards those. Yes, I know, not what they should be doing, but that is how it is.