A recent study done by the University of Roehampton has found that fewer 16-year-olds are getting a computing qualification, it also states that the time spent in teaching the subject have been cut back. In 2018, around 130,000 students who got a GCSE in ICT or information and communications technology or computer science are down from 140,000 the previous year. This year, the ICT exam is not an option.
Because of the fall in exam passes, it phased out the ICT GCSE from the national curriculum in England and it is replaced by computer science which is more challenging. However, with entries for computer science growing slowly, fewer 16-year-olds emerged with any computing qualification.
The study shows that the provision of computing education is in decline, with the number of hours spent in computing that is taught in English secondary school classrooms fell by 31% between 2012 and 2017. The study also shows that the majority of the students who do not choose to take the computer science GCSE are unlikely to get any computing education in schools beyond the age of 14.
"It looks likely that hundreds of thousands of students, particularly girls and poorer students, will be disenfranchised from a digital education over the next few years," said Peter Kemp, senior lecturer in computing education at the University of Roehampton.
Around 61% of schools offered computer science GCSE as an option in 2018, which is a rise on the previous year. But a lot of schools where it had been an option previously, dropped it last year.
One of the study's authors, Miles Berry, says that the new GCSE has got a reputation for being more difficult than other subjects and it has put off students who are less academic.
"Even among the academically strong, privileged intake, performance is typically below that of students' other subjects, and thus students, their parents, and their head teachers might understandably take the view that this is not an easy way to get top grades," he said.
The previous ICT course did not have a good reputation as it was labeled as giving children a few skills apart from teaching them how to set up a spreadsheet or to make a PowerPoint presentation. Universities have stated their concern about this since students who were applying to study computing do not have the basic programming skill that should have been taught at school.
The Department for Education said the government had acknowledged the importance of computing by making it a compulsory part of the national curriculum.
"We are investing £84m over the next four years to up-skill up to 8,000 computer science teachers and drive up participation in computer science," said a spokesperson.
