Sue Sentance on Computing in Schools in the UK & Ireland

Computing is widely taught in schools in the UK and Ireland, but how does the subject vary across primary and secondary education in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland? We spoke to Sue Sentance, at the University of Cambridge about her paper Computing in School in the UK & Ireland: A Comparative Study co-authored with Diana Kirby, Keith Quille, Elizabeth Cole, Tom Crick and Nicola Looker. This was published in the Proceedings of the UK Conference on United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education UKICER. From the abstract:

Many countries have increased their focus on computing in primary and secondary education in recent years and the UK and Ireland are no exception. The four nations of the UK have distinct and separate education systems, with England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland offering different national curricula, qualifications, and teacher education opportunities; this is the same for the Republic of Ireland. This paper describes computing education in these five jurisdictions and reports on the results of a survey conducted with computing teachers. A validated instrument was localised and used for this study, with 512 completed responses received from teachers across all five countries The results demonstrate distinct differences in the experiences of the computing teachers surveyed that align with the policy and provision for computing education in the UK and Ireland. This paper increases our understanding of the differences in computing education provision in schools across the UK and Ireland, and will be relevant to all those working to understand policy around computing education in school.

Show notes and transcript for this podcast can be found at uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-1