PISA chief says there is no purpose in teaching children how to code - Tutor Hunt Blog

PISA chief says there is no purpose in teaching children how to code PISA chief says there is no purpose in teaching children how to code PISA chief says there is no purpose in teaching children how to codeSchoolsThe PISA chief has announced that coding, a recent addition to the UK`s national curriculum `will be outdated very soon.` PISA is the OECD`s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment, an independent institution that assesses every three years 15 year old students from all over the world in reading, mathematics and science. The results from this study are useful for ranking countries, and can provide convienent information at a glance. In the most recent results, which saw Singapore coming top in all categories, the UK did not perform particularly well, falling well outside the top 15 positions in reading and science, and only managing a dismal 27th place in mathematics. Andreas Schleicher, the Chief of PISA, has suggested that coding is a fad, a `technique of our times` and that it is very unlikely to have any longevity as a core subject. I must say that these comments are rather surprising to me. Coding is now part of the national curriculum, replacing the rather undefined and nebulous `IT` subject in 2014, and is taught to all pupils in some form from the age of five. It seems somewhat strange to me that someone would suggest that the subject might be phased out anytime soon - just about every aspect of our lives is infused with computers and technology, from business, social interactions, to education itself. Our reliance on technology is expected to increase exponentially over the next few decades, and with this there will surely be a concomitant increase in demand for IT specialists. Coding is just about as important an IT skill as one can possess - if you can code you can make an app, design and build a website, and perform many more vital tas ks related to the IT sector. Why then is Andreas Schleicher, a statistician and researcher in the field of education, suggesting that there is no real point in teaching coding? In a speech he gave at the World Innovation Summit for Education (Wise) in Paris last month Mr Schleicher made the point that coding is a contemporary pursuit, and unlikely to become a permanent or core subject: `Five hundred years ago we might have thought about pen literacy. In a way coding is just one technique of our times. And I think it would be a bad mistake to have that tool become ingrained.` `You teach it to three-year-olds and by the time they graduate they will ask you, `Remind me, what was coding.` That tool will be outdated very soon.` I think it`s highly unlikely that coding will vanish from the classroom within the next 10 or 15 years - indeed I will make the prediction that it will become ever more ubiquitous, an even more important part of the curriculum in the coming years. Of course in the future there may be developments that make programming more approachable - there may even come a time when a system is invented that would enable someone like myself to code, though this may be dreaming of the impossible! just using a word processor is stretching my technical abilities to their limits! Mr Schleicher`s point seems to be that he would prefer coding be taught with a view as to its application, rather than in some abstract way: `I would be much more inclined to teach data science or computational thinking than to teach a very specific technique of today. The trick is to teach fewer things at greater depth that is really the heart of education success.` Speaking recently at the World Innovation Summit for Education (Wise) in Paris, Mr Schleicher compared coding to trigonometry, which apparently has uses that don`t apply anymore. Just with this comment I believe Mr Schleicher has shown his lack of judgement - tell any structural engineer or architect that trigonometry no longer has any use, and they may look at you askance, waiting for the punchline of the joke. Not to mention its protean practical applications - from navigating to surveying - it is a core part of geometry. Mathematics will always be valid, will always have `application,` be it in pure or applied domains. For Mr Schleicher to suggest trigonometry is no longer useful suggests to me a grave misjudgement on his part. If this misjudgement extends to his predictions about coding only time will tell, but I suspect we will soon be teaching our children about logic gates along with teaching them their times tables. 12 months ago0Add a Comment