Computing education needs a major system upgrade if the field is to attract more girls, says Royal Society report

The Royal Society is calling for a major upgrade to computing education to appeal to a more diverse student population, and ensure all young people leave school “digitally literate” and better prepared for future careers and study.

The current computing curriculum is not fit for purpose. Computing education in England is held back by a shortage of qualified teachers, outdated equipment and patchy course availability across the country. Urgent reform is needed to encourage take up from underrepresented groups, particularly girls. Recommendations include the use of more representative role-models and increased opportunities for creative projects within the computing curriculum to show how digital skills can be used across disciplines.

The last decade alone has seen huge advancements in data and AI technologies, yet the computing curriculum in England has remained unchanged since 2014. Since 2015, there has been a sharp decline in those taking GCSEs in computing subjects, driven by qualification reforms which replaced ICT with Computer Science.

Across Europe, the UK has the lowest percentage of girls interested in computer science subjects. Only 28% girls aspire to work in the ‘technology industry’ compared to 60% boys. A level computer science has lowest number of female entries across STEM subjects at just 18%, and across all STEM A levels at just 6%. Meanwhile only 25% of computing students at undergraduate level are female. At the current rate of uptake, it would take over thirty years to reach gender parity in the subject.

The report calls for a broadening of the topics included in computing GCSE, with less emphasis on the technical elements (e.g. coding, mathematics) and increased coverage of digital media, graphic design and animation, for example. Connecting computing with real life applications would enable more students to develop computing skills in a way that is more meaningful to them, while showcasing the breadth of career opportunities to which computing skills could add value.

The digital skills gap is estimated to cost the UK economy £63 billion per year and, without remedial action, is expected to widen in the future. This will result in a workforce ill-equipped to meet the demands of the digital age.

Computing education in England suffers from uneven provision as well as significant barriers for underrepresented groups to participate in the subject at GCSE and beyond. Currently a third of all school children do not have continuous access to a suitable device at home for learning (OFCOM), a figure that has risen since 2021 when the DfE’s closed its Get Help with Technology service which delivered 1.3 million laptops and tablets to disadvantaged children with limited or no access to the internet.

The report calls for the Government to restore the c. £100m funding it committed during the previous parliament in its next spending review period, to ensure that the 1.5 million school-age children in the UK have access to devices and a suitable broadband connection.

With many computing skills often learned in self-study at home, providing more pupils with access to suitable equipment would be a step to ensuring all pupils have the opportunity to develop their computing confidence.

Lack of specialist teachers means provision of computing qualifications is patchy with many schools and colleges not offering computing qualifications at GCSE and/or A level. The Royal Society has commissioned maps using Department for Education public sector data to show regional patchiness of computing qualification provision. As of 2023, one in three secondary schools were still not offering computer science as an option at GCSE, while approximately two in five students were not offered the chance to study A level computing in 2023. However, as the maps highlight, low uptake across GCSE and A level shows the subject does not appeal to students, even when they do have access to the subject. This is especially true of girls, who enjoy computing significantly less than boys and see it a “boring”.

Simon Peyton Jones FRS, computer scientist and member of the Royal Society Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education (RS ACME) said: “Computing has the potential to be a rich and varied discipline, but to study computing we need specialist computing teachers and computers that work. These critical resources are in short supply, particularly in disadvantaged schools, exacerbating problems with under-representation. We must do more to ensure every young person leaves school digitally literate, and confident with the skills needed to flourish as well-informed participants in an increasingly digital world.”