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<p>As part of the reforms to the national curriculum, the Department for Education
is strengthening the teaching of programming in schools by replacing ICT with computing.
The new computing programmes of study, which will be taught in maintained schools
from September 2014, have a much greater emphasis on computer science and include
a significant focus on programming. Primary school pupils at key stage 1 will be taught
to understand what algorithms are, create and debug simple programs, and use logical
reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs. Building on this, primary school
pupils at key stage 2 will be taught to design, write and debug programs that accomplish
specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems; use sequence,
selection, and repetition in programs; and use logical reasoning to detect and correct
errors in algorithms and programs.</p><p>The Department is funding several projects
to help teachers acquire the necessary subject knowledge and skills to teach the new
computing curriculum. We are funding the British Computer Society (BCS) to help primary
school teachers improve their subject knowledge through online teach-yourself resources
and 800 in-school workshops. We are also funding BCS to build a network of 400 ‘Master
Teachers'. A further £500,000 competitive match-funded scheme was announced on 4 February
to support excellent computing teaching and lever additional investment and engagement
from business.</p><p> </p>
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