UK government response to my letter about programming in schools

When I read the first letter I carelessly didn't check the header and assumed that it was the "UK government response..." that you spoke of. I thought, wow, someone in our government is really switched on. They've cross referenced their letter, they are aware of the history of the subject and they understand why Britain is so woefully behind in this area. And moreover, they are reaching out to computing experts (albeit ones that contacted them first) to help with the project and meet with them in person. Awesome.

Then I read the second letter and recognised the unimaginative, bureaucratic style that British people have come to love and cherish. "Oh, how can I get rid of this person and make them someone else's problem."

Internationally, attitudes towards programming in academic circles are finally changing. There is right at this moment a real sea-change in the air. I don't know if that is due to Veovodsky's work on a new "Univalent Foundations for Mathematics" or whether people are just waking up to how much work it actually takes to bring academic computing work up to industry standards. But there is a change.

Unfortunately I am yet to see evidence of it in Britain, however. Students still remain woefully underprepared in this area and don't seem to develop a natural affinity for programming except in extremely rare cases. And the academic attitude to computing is still very standoffish on the whole.

And we justify mandatory schooling by saying society is complicated and there are some things people need to learn to be able to live reasonably.

How does Wales justify locking up young humans and forcing them to learn something which isn't in their best interests, something which isn't in their society's best interests, something which cannot survive on its own out of interested people keeping it alive by choice? It's abusive and should be stopped.

How much better can they do their job if they know how to do algebra, or order a sandwich in France?

Arguing that programming skills wouldn't help... have you not worked in an office and seen first-hand the dreadful computer literacy? Even among IT and technical people? Skill in bulk manipulating information would help a lot of people, if they realised it was possible and something they could potentially do, I think.

John is right, he still cares, and is only trying to help.

The official response he received from the government demonstrates exactly what has become of once great Britain and why Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was right to recently apply the adjective 'squandering' to the UK education.

Sadly, faced with this attitude, many other professionals who could also be helping, are beyond caring.

It is tempting to hope beyond hope that perhaps it was due to some minute fault in John's presentation of his argument that lead to him being totally stonewalled.

However, his message to the government is perfectly simple and clear: 'you are in charge of the curricculum, so please put programming on it'.

No, unfortunately the only conclusion must be that he got that response precisely because it was intended, and so will anyone else butting in and trying to interfere with a nice monopoly earner deal for MS.

The real answer as to why only buttons on MS software are being taught, and will be taught, could probably be found if we were allowed to be privy to the secret talks that the MS executives hold with the UK government(s) while visiting and bringing a few scraps of cash to the table.

The reason is quite simple: zealous adherence to the religion of free-markets. According to the government parents are forever demanding 'choice' (actually I think what most of them want is for the local school to be decent, and not to have to ship their kid 50 miles a day to some distant school…). So of course parents must be provided with some way to compare schools, no matter how statistically meaningless it might be, and thus league tables were given great significance.

The current government plan to take this even further by allowing private companies to run state school for profit. Thus further incentivising cheating, manipulation of test results, pushing students into easy subjects, teaching to tests, not allowing entry to students who won't perform well, not allowing students to sit tests if they might not get top marks, underfunding of 'hard' subjects and so on. Parent's power to actually complain about a school is reduced as well: schools will no longer be run by democratically elected local authorities, but by the largely unelected board of governors. If you have a complaint they won't deal with (most schools won't even tell you the names of the governors), you have to go directly to the secretary of state and, as this submission demonstrates, getting an answer from Mr Gove is very difficult (no doubt you would be fobbed off with a "we don't interfere with the running of individual schools" response).