SCARI Computing Project Overview

Background:

Knowledge and use of computer science/computing can open doors for young people in terms of jobs and future opportunity. However, research into computing education has shown that girls are poorly represented in computer science qualifications, such as the recently introduced Computer Science GCSE (Kemp, Wong & Berry, 2019).The SCARI Computing project aims to find out the factors that relate to better uptake and attainment in computing amongst students from all backgrounds in English secondary schools. The study will use the National Pupil Dataset and School Workforce Census, alongside school case studies through quantitative and qualitative data collected from school managers, students and documents such as schemes of work. This study is important because it will impact policies and educational interventions to reduce the participation and attainment gaps between students in computing education. This project is lead by Dr Peter Kemp (King's College London), in collaboration with Professor Billy Wong (University of Reading) and team members Dr Jessica Hamer and Meggie Copsey-Blake. The project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and you can view the project on Nuffield's website here and the King's College London website here.

Aims:

The overarching aim of this project is to provide evidence to inform policies and practices that can address the underperformance and uptake of girls in secondary school level computing in England. The project will enable us to generate important new data and understandings into the current unequal patterns of attainment and participation in GCSE Computer Science (CS) and general computing provision in secondary schools.