Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve digital skills in schools.

Ensuring that all children, regardless of their background, have the digital and computing knowledge they need for the future is a priority of this Government.

The Department introduced computing as a statutory National Curriculum subject in 2014, to replace the subject of information and communications technology (ICT) which had been widely regarded as outdated. The computing curriculum is designed to ensure that all pupils are taught how to evaluate and apply information technology and how digital systems work, alongside the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science and e safety. From Key Stage 1, pupils are taught how to write computer programs, and England was one of the first G20 countries to introduce coding into the primary curriculum.

The GCSE and A level were reformed in 2016 and 2015 respectively, as part of the Department’s wider reform to establish a suite of qualifications which are in line with expected standards in countries with high performing education systems. There are also a range of high quality ICT related vocational and technical qualifications available that are counted in the Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 performance tables, providing alternative pathways for digital careers.

The Department has established the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) to support teachers of computing, backed by over £100 million of funding across November 2018 to August 2025. The NCCE provides free, high quality, continuing professional development and teaching resources through a network of over 30 computing hubs across England. To date, the NCCE’s achievements include equipping over 7,600 secondary teachers with the subject expertise they need to confidently teach the GCSE through the Computer Science Accelerator programme, and the launch of the Teach Computing Curriculum in July 2020, which consists of over 500 hours of teaching resources, which have been downloaded 1.6 million times by teachers in English schools.