I read Bill Brown's letter with a mixture of disappointment and dismay (August 4).
He poses the question in Latin: "cui bono" – who stands to gain? May I, as a computing teacher, offer a hopefully constructive response?
The obvious beneficiaries are our young people. Mr Brown's declaration that commercial forces are at work offers an unbalanced perspective on the subject. He asserts the preferable setting for teaching computing science is in further and higher education. Computing, including programming, has been taught in Scottish schools since the mid-1980s, at Standard Grade, Higher and Advanced Higher level and latterly at Intermediate 2. Now with the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), computing science concepts are being introduced at an earlier stage, including primary schools. Universities are engaging with schools to encourage and promote an understanding of computing science ideas, particularly at early secondary level. From my own experience, the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow has created curriculum-related workshops and brought enthusiastic university students into the classroom through the University Student Ambassadors scheme.
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