UK to Teach Programming Starting at 5-Years-Old

The United Kingdom Department of Education will introduced a radical change in their education system, as it plans to teach "rigorous computer science" to all children from age 5 to 14 years old. According to UK's education minister who was quoted saying exactly the same words uttered by the Chairman of Google about his view in the current education system of the country. He stated, "As the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently lamented, we in England have allowed our education system to ignore our great heritage and we are paying the price for it." the minister stated. According to the education minister of UK, the dramatic change will be possible in just a few years, once they remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum, instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teaches, they could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch. UK students aged 16 years old could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered in University courses and be writing their own Apps for smartphones. So with the new program of teaching programming to UK students, Words and Excel are out; and Scratch is in. The UK's education minister explained further that, what really matters is that an example has been set and computer science - understanding computers, how they work and making them do new things - is in. To entice programmers and computer experts to teach programming, the education department, together with the British Computer Society, is running a campaign to get new blood to teach computer science with awards of £9,000 to £20,000 to people signing up to the computer science initial teacher training scheme which starts in September 2013. The new curriculum comes into effect across all levels of education from September 2014. For more information regarding the plans of the UK education system just visit the official website of the United Kingdom.