Introduction

Following on from the excellent proposals and blog posts from others* concerning national curriculum reform for computing at KS4, my personal views here draw on my current role as Head of 3-18 Computing and my prior role as Deputy Head Curriculum.

[See Becci Peters summary, Natalie Dillon, Dave Gwilt, Greg King, Simon Peyton Jones]

It is my view that any reform of Computing at KS4 should look to integrate with the growing national consensus that KS4 is over-assessing our young people with too many, knowledge top-heavy, specifications which no longer find the right balance with the critical, analytical and creative thinking skills which are needed for higher education and the workplace.

Wider KS4 Perspective

I would like to speak to this diagram which proposes a wider reform to KS4. I believe that Computing can play multiple parts within a holistic attempt to resolve national concerns over some of today's main 'KS4 challenges'.

Any qualification reform program requires solutions for current issues which mesh together within a compatible framework to take us forward across a number of related gains. Subject specialist bodies providing subject-specialist perspectives are welcome but I'd suggest that they can only take us so far when looking for an integrated solution for national change.

I propose the following changes for Key Stage 4, which are illustrated in the diagram.

• Students complete a GCSE in maths and English Literature, plus six more GCSE electives subject to some breadth restrictions
• Every student also completes a pass/fail competency certificate in 
  • English Language literacy
  • Digital and AI literacy
  • Maths and Science literacy
  • A Modern Foreign Language (functional) literacy

A suite of modern, efficiently-assessed competency certificates can reduce the overall end-of-stage assessment overload because their completion, certification, and retakes if necessary, can be completed outside of the exam season, benefitting from an adaptive approach via question-bank selection.

• I still see a useful role for KS4 public exam assessment but with a generational opportunity to rethink our assessment techniques to construct a kinder, fairer and more supportive KS4 assessment framework. This should utilise elements of repeatable and adaptive assessment to evidence core literacies alongside fewer full GCSE qualifications.
• Facilitating a number of on-screen and adaptive pass/fail literacies can ensure that all students complete KS4 with a sound baseline of knowledge and skills whilst providing opportunity to distribute assessment more evenly across the KS4 time period.
• National reform provides opportunity to address the failing compulsory retake policy for GCSE Maths & English, focussing instead on requiring all students to achieve a pass for English Language and Numeracy & Scientific competency certifications. It also provides opportunity to restructure the ongoing messiness of the under-allocated dual English Language & Literature courses.
• Functional MFL (reading & speaking) competency certification could also rejuvenate the worsening trajectory of KS4 modern foreign language uptake. By focussing in on more functional aspects of the language and assessing at the pass/fail level, we can also seek to address the ongoing issue of native speakers soaking the top grades whilst continuing to facilitate full GCSE MFL study for those with more particular linguistic aptitudes and interests.
• Separation of core competency certificates from full GCSEs facilitates an opportunity to update and refresh our national curriculum for a much needed update and re-evaluation of what knowledge and skills really should form part of every student's KS4 arsenal. Considering the sciences for a moment, how many of us really feel that electrolysis of brine or Flemming's Left Hand Rule are really essential for each and every student to master when compared with the need to complete basic usage calculations for an electricity bill or understand elementary principles of data collection and processing? By nature of antiquity, as discussed convincingly in Simon Peyton Jones' recent post, certain content is rolled out year-on-year without question via certain compulsory provision, rigorously enforced by OfQual. Meanwhile other, also nominally compulsory, provision is quietly ignored and permitted to be so. A Numeracy & Scientific competency certificate could ensure coverage of practical scientific principles that all should be aware of (such as house insulation and broadband speeds) whilst freeing the country from the questionable Dual Award model and facilitating GCSE CS to be a valid choice within any constraints on the number of studied sciences.
• I would propose that most schools might look to offer first sitting of these competency certificates towards the end of the first term of Year 11 but they could of course be relocated to suit an individual school's or student's needs. By utilising online adaptive question selection from a large bank of questions, students can demonstrate their competency at any stage and could retake at any stage subject to a suitable minimum delay between resit attempts e.g. 2 months. If certificates are completed several months before GCSE examinations, this frees up some timetable space for a small element of supervised private study alongside small group or individual targetted interventions which, assisted by Socratic AI tools, could empower students with some agency on their own GCSE consolidation. 
• Certification pass rates would need to be incorporated into school accountability measurements of course (weighted alongside GCSE outcomes) to ensure suitable provision and delivery is prioritised by all schools. Consideration could be given to adding a Merit level to the certification outcomes as well but a simplified grading model should suffice to establish core competencies with GCSEs still retaining the wider grading scale.

In so doing, I would hope that KS4 could achieve less exam stress and overload for students, reduced  complexity for schools during exam seasons and a nudge closer to a real-world dynamic where skills and competencies matter a great deal more than the ability to cram large amounts of knowledge into short-term memory for just long enough to get into and back out of the examination hall.

Integrating Computing Reform

Having started with the wider perspective, if I turn attention to the multi-faceted aspects of KS4 Computing, I would like to propose that we focus our reform energy on the following three goals:

• Campaigning for every student to have studied and achieved a basic Digital & AI competency certificate at KS4. 
• Campaigning to protect but update the current Computer Science GCSE to focus even more clearly on the skills required by those who would benefit from its study (as a true member of the science GCSE qualification set).
• Campaigning to add a Creative Digital Digital GCSE in development of the skills required by the  blossoming UK creative sector: might this fit better within the D&T umbrella however?

1. Campaigning for every student to achieve a basic Digital & AI competency certificate at KS4

Put frankly, it is simply intolerable that we have not yet made more national progress on what should be a core educational provision and right for every child to educate them for the needs and challenges of the modern digital world.

• It must be for everyone: this is a core message of KS4 Computing and, despite being widely ignored and flouted, it remains more essential than ever with modern AI developments that every child receives training in the fundamental and practical essentials of digital skills, now including generative AI prompting skills.
• These are practical skills which must be practically assessed. We already have solutions on hand towards this end. Online and repeatable pass/fail Microsoft Office Certification and Google Workspace Certification already demonstrate workable solution approaches in this area (which some students in the UK already receive opportunity to certificate in). With a clear national framework established and suitable funding, testing organisations such as Certiport could provide modified versions of existing assessments in this space, facilitating cloud-based testing on a range of popular digital frameworks.
• Whilst reform of the current Computer Science GCSE might lead to some acceleration in uptake, it will never suitably provide for this fundamental requirement. In my opinion, we should continue to be clear on a simple and unarguable demand for KS4 Computing for all, delivered and assessed at the level of a digital competency certificate.

2. Campaigning to protect but update the current Computer Science GCSE to focus even more clearly on the skills required by those students who would benefit from its study

• I worry that our pace of change is too frequent for national provision and behaviour patterns to adapt. Here again, with significant CS reform, we risk lurching from provision to provision full of good ideas but with limited ability to spot the downsides of our latest ‘plans’ or indeed the time it would take for this new big idea to bear fruit before we will have likely jumped ship yet again.
• Computer Science is one of the fastest-growing subjects at GCSE, with another significant rise of some 20% in entry numbers last summer. Informally, from my discussion with overseas schools/teachers, I find it is also much discussed and admired internationally. Let’s wait to see what happens this summer. Admittedly, the student yeargroup population size was also growing last year, so other GCSE electives such as Geography and History also rose (with a slight fall in RS), but CS, now on a sound academic footing, continues to make ground on the established GCSE electives each year. So let's not beat ourselves up too much just yet and let's not start undermining our subject nationally by striking up the band too heavily to the "boring" tune (more on this below).
• The rise in girls’ entry numbers for GCSE CS was 23% last year; higher than for boys. There is lots more to do of course and we start from a low base. But society doesn’t change in a few years, and a twenty-year project to solve a societal problem is not an unreasonable human timeline to ask for even in this digital age of immediacy. After much listening and much advice-taking, uptake at our school for GCSE CS is now approximately gender-neutral and is also the most popular elective GCSE choice for students at KS4. More of a problem remains for us at A Level where the restrictions of the UK three A-Level model still seem to conspire against the national interest.
• It is undeniable that independent schools are better equipped to respond more flexibly and add provision more quickly than state schools. The understandable and correct angst about this should be positively utilised to focus significant energy on improving provision, training, role-modelling and inclusivity drives in the maintained sector to match any progression being achieved in the independent sector.
• GCSE Computer Science is funnelling into the core academic understanding and skills that most students across STEM and Economics related subjects require for their higher education and futures. So I am unconvinced by any inclusion of ICT skills, especially ones such as creating a 30-second video, into GCSE CS which I perceive as a backward step. Not only would this undermine the core academic nature of the subject, it would focus on “here today, gone tomorrow” skills instead of fundamental CS principles. Someone might try to argue the same about programming in the light of AI. But GCSE is about building essential understanding of unchanging subject principles. If we think it still reasonable, as nationally we seem to, that all students complete KS4 with some basic scientific awareness of how a motor works and cellular structure, then GCSE algorithms & coding, as one half of GCSE CS, merely aspires that students have a basic understanding of the fundamental building blocks of our discipline: sequence, selection, repetition and decomposition/abstraction. These ideas will not be irrelevant to human thinking any time soon: not least because generative AI models are applying exactly these principles to their implementations of machine-learning and their production of generative output!
• The “boring” feedback requires a deeper dive and honest reflection. Computer scientists love a good logic problem, but the thought of an eight-marker essay question (12 at A Level) on the principles of data protection or cataloguing the detail of network layers does not fill most with joy. Nor is it required to the same extent in other scientific assessments! There is still too much explain/describe in GCSE CS assessment, and consequently teachers have to spend too long covering and practising this detail. This is not least because of the over-precise nature of current mark schemes which reward certain words or phrases above understanding.
• The success of competitions such as UK Bebras and its huge entry numbers, young & old students alike including many students not able to study CS, is testament alone to the fact that students don’t find the heart of computational thinking and problem-solving boring. When someone of a scientific disposition reports that they find something boring and would like to do it rather than describe it, I find they are more commonly referring to this desire to be given a hands-on 'Bebras style' question and not be asked to endlessly regurgitate theory statements. This understandable frustration on students' part should not be mistaken for a desire, from our existing cohort at least, for open-ended coursework-style assessment. On the contrary it will scare away the very students whose interests align most constructively with studying GCSE CS.
• We should be brave enough to acknowledge that, even with some of the more dry theory removed from GCSE CS, that some students still would not find the subject to be compelling study material. The same is true of mathematics, science and English where of course some students would drop these subjects if permitted to. I'm not someone who thinks every student should have to do a full computing GCSE or equivalent. The end of KS3 seems a reasonable time to let student choice and natural interest take effect in the matter. With a move to core digital skill competency being compulsory and certificated at KS4, I would argue that we should permit and encourage students to take different routes best suited to their individual interests and skillsets for their main GCSEs. I don't accept that this will unavoidably lead to significant differences in GCSE CS uptake by gender: our school has shown this need not be the case but good inclusivity practices and role-modelling are essential alongside slow but steady societal change.

3. Campaigning to add a Creative Digital Design GCSE in development of the skills required by the blossoming UK creative sector

There is an argument that a wide number of students who might not naturally love a good logic or systemising problem would embrace opportunities, perhaps particularly creative ones, within the Computing space. I hear that, and the UK creative and media sector is immensely strong and growing stronger. It certainly deserves its own funneling qualification in the digital media space, rewarded with full GCSE accreditation. Where creative qualifications have been welcomed in Design & Technology and Art & Design, a creative digital route is still badged as a second-class citizen with Level 2 certificate status only, lacking full GCSE accreditation.

But let’s not try to entwine these different educational desires and purposes together again. That is likely to serve only to irritate many, satisfy few, and undo too quickly the steady and sure progress being made with society's understanding of Computer Science and the body of knowledge and skills which it pertains to.

Neither is there significant overlap between the educational needs of the Creative Digital community and every UK student. These skills, such as creative 30-second video production, should not be part of any compulsory Digital competency certificate.

No; instead there is a specific and valuable body of skills and knowledge which is well-suited to the Creative Digital Design sector. It could usefully include, for example, deeper experience of web-styling and cascading-style-sheets: assessed not through a theory exam but through a digital portfolio.

Again, if we step back and take the wider view, I would argue that D&T already provide a good qualification model in this area. In fact there are good synergies in the standard D&T design, production, project management and evaluation cycle which could integrate naturally with a Digital Design GCSE.

Certain existing Level 2 qualifications such as Creative iMedia are already demonstrating good practice in this area but this would be a good time for a fully accredited GCSE and we should consider reaching out across our subject silos to find the best solution.

If an element of breadth-retention were wisely to be required at KS4 then such a Creative Digital Design GCSE could be used by pupils to satisfy the requirement to include at least one Creative subject in a student's elective pool. This would sit alongside other Creative choices including Music, Art & Design, Drama and Design & Technology. There is a compelling narrative that a student's KS4 journey should include a creative element and the rewarding satisfaction from a well-constructed video animation sequence or CSS transition-styling can be just as valid as that of a physical D&T / Art product or a musical composition. 

With common assessment practice, all creatives can serve to further reduce examination pressure at the end of KS4 and integrate more tightly with a new vision to bring the quantity of end-of-course KS4 assessment back under control.

Would it matter if a student chose to study a Creative Digital Design GCSE alongside a Computer Science GCSE? I don't see why it should particularly: rightly constructed, they should be concerned with very different matters: one would sit inside the Science space and the other within the Creative space.

Conclusions