What has England learned (Part 1)?
At the end of last year Miles Berry, a university lecturer and strong advocate for computing at schools, gave a talk at EUCodeWeek in Madrid where he covered what England had learnt in the previous three years. As the saying goes those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it so lets have a look at what he said.
He first made the point that coding is not in the curriculum as the end goal. The end goal is to develop the skills of computational thinking and creativity. In England this starts before the age of five where children are encouraged to form their own ideas, make predictions, test ideas and change strategy when needed. From this foundation more specific computational concepts are taught and by the age of seven children should know what an algorithm is and by age eleven they should be able to write and read code. This, by and large, mirrors the Australian Curriculum requirements.
In terms of how to teach coding they have learnt that it is important to make it a two step process. Firstly, work out how to solve the problem and devise an algorithm and then secondly, write the code.They have found an incremental approach using resources such as Beebots initially before moving onto Scratch and then Python has worked best.
Some general observations that Miles made were:
- Teaching coding doesn't always mean using a computer
- It is easier to read code than to write it
- It is easier to edit code than to start from a blank screen
- Pair programming (where two students work together on one computer) is a powerful method
- Teachers have to find interesting contexts
- Debugging improves the Growth Mindset
- Coding IS for everyone!
There is a lot that Australian teachers can learn from their English counterparts. Next week I will conclude with what links they have found between coding and computational thinking and what teachers need to deliver the subject properly. | 
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