At the start of the 2011 school year, HCH changed its views on ICT and implemented a more computer science curriculum. This turned out to be the correct decision as in 2012 Michael Gove heavily criticised the national ICT curriculum and instructed schools across the country to start teaching more computing skills in the classroom.

Now in 2013 the Education Secretary has announced that computer science will be added to the separate science options for the EBacc meaning that students now can achieve a grade C or above in three of the four science areas (chemistry, physics, biology or computer science) to help gain an EBacc qualification. With the pass rate in EBacc subjects being used as a guide in the school league tables, this is great news for the subject of computer science as its importance in education is finally being recognised.

At HCH not only have we already introduced OCR Computing GCSE for our current Year 10s, but we are also introducing the OCR Entry Level in Computing at Year 8. This is a level 1 course (GCSE is level 2) that was only accredited in January 2013. This makes us one of the first schools in the whole country to offer this qualification to our students and demonstrates our commitment to producing some of the best educated computer scientists at key stage 3 and 4.

What most schools don’t teach

Video courtesy of Code.org