The Universities of Abertay, Dundee, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh Napier, Strathclyde, and Robert Gordon are pleased to announce that they will recommend Higher Computing Science for entry to the first year of undergraduate Computing programmes.
This follows on from a successful meeting organised by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), which brought together school teachers, academics and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to discuss the new curriculum.
SICSA Director of Education Dr Karen Petrie (University of Dundee) commented, “This is further evidence of the strong partnership between Scotland’s universities, schools and Government in ensuring that Scottish pupils receive world class computing education.”
Computing At School, the grassroots organisation for computing education and subject association for Computer Science in the UK, has welcomed the decision. Kate Farrell, co-Chair of Computing At School Scotland, explained, “This is an important step towards school leaders, parents and pupils recognising Computing Science as a rigorous academic subject.”
Dr Quintin Cutts (University of Glasgow), also co-Chair of CAS Scotland and National Project Officer for the Scottish Government-funded CPD project Professional Learning and Networking for Computing (PLAN C), pointed out that the new SQA qualifications had enabled the universities to make this commitment to schools Computing Science.
He noted, “Teachers across the country are putting in a huge amount of effort to ensure that pupils reach the raised outcomes set by the new qualifications. We hope that the PLAN C CPD programme will further help teachers nationwide meet this goal.”
