In 10 days or so, I'll be returning to my secondary school, the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, to give a talk to parents and students in year 12 about Computer Science. This will be part of an annual careers evening - I'm not sure if they've had a 'representative' for Computer Science in the past but it is a very promising sign that they do this year.
Certainly when I was applying to university to study Computer Science almost eight years ago, there was very little in terms of specific application support. Even worse, three years ago, after graduating, when I went to go speak to the careers advisor at the time, he informed me that "students just don't want to study Computer Science, they just want to stick to professional careers like law, medicine and economics". Needless to say, I was astonished at his lack of foresight. When a student attends a careers evening and all they see are big stands and presentations on traditional professional careers, they're bound to give these more consideration. Equally so, a private school has the responsibility to equip its pupils suitably for changes in society at large - parents may not be aware that a career in technology nowadays can be quite fulfilling, stable and lucrative. (As a computer scientists, my peers and I had no trouble finding good work when graduating into a recession. The same can not be said of my economist friends, several of whom are underemployed or were forced into further study.)
Thankfully that careers adviser has since moved on and HABS is making good efforts to support and nurture any fledgling technologists in their student body. They have a capable head of IT who runs a lunchtime computing society where students are introduced to programming. He's also very current with the latest computing trends (they've already introduced Raspberry Pis into the syllabus) and has plans to adopt the new GCSE computing curriculum.
These are all very positive signs. When smart young pupils spend a considerable proportion of their free time using technology, whether it be their smartphone or their Playstation 3, and want to learn more about how these products are built, there's absolutely no reason why a forward thinking secondary school can't and shouldn't support them all the way.
The slide deck for my presentation is available here. Please feel free to re-use it under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
