AQO 9211/11-16

Mr Stewart Dickson
Alliance Party
East Antrim

Tabled Date: 19/11/2015
Answered On Date: 01/12/2015
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education what initiatives are in place to encourage the development of computer programming skills in schools.

Answer:

The curriculum has been designed to provide flexibility for schools to develop experiences that best suit the needs of their pupils. Embedding mandatory, cross-curricular skills and keeping prescribed content to a minimum, allows schools to choose the most appropriate approach to take to ensure that pupils are engaged and challenged, to reach their full potential.

Computer Science, which includes computer coding, is a specialised field and the flexibility already in place within the curriculum, enables schools to teach Computer Science at any Key Stage.

My Department continues to provide core funding of £300k in 2015/16 to Sentinus, the Department’s frontline STEM delivery partner, to deliver a range of STEM interventions to primary and post-primary schools.

Sentinus’s “IT’s Your Choice” programme, which promotes practical computer programming to young people from Key Stage 2 to post 16 will be available this year and will engage over 8,000 primary and post-primary pupils.