2014 has been declared Year of Code, to encourage us all to understand the maths and science behind the user-friendly computer apps we all use. One key initiative is to transform computing education so every child aged five to 16 years old learns at least some code. Yet there seems confusion about the objectives of the Year of Code: its director Lottie Dexter infamously admitted on TV she doesn’t know how to code, and some experts have derided the claim that coding ‘is really simple to learn and anyone can do it - not just rocket scientists’. The basic logic behind coding may be fairly simple, but can retraining teachers who are not programmers lead to anything but a ‘dumbed down’ version of coding? After all, rather than learning in the classroom, lots of teens enthusiastically already teach themselves coding as a hobby, tinkering and experimenting at home. Often the drive to learn HTML, PHP, Perl or Ruby on Rails comes from having a concrete end-goal in mind, solving real problems, done by trial and error. Might curriculum specifications and Ofsted inspections kill off its inherently creative drive?

Others worry that coding is being championed as an assault on present educational priorities and pedagogy dubbed ‘old-fashioned’ by digital-enthusiasts. Joanna Shields, the UK’s ambassador for digital industries and chair of TechCity UK, admitted she believes ‘it’s time we stopped teaching French in British schools and substitute science, coding or digital literacy instead’. Creative industries minister Ed Vaizey’s skills champion, Ian Livingstone, whose company created Tomb Raider, has described coding as ‘the new Latin. It’s the lingua franca of the modern world.’ Business leaders seem to be leading the drive in schools, arguing for a curriculum that matches the skills required by today’s job market, to arm a generation of school-leavers for the digital workplace. More broadly, it is argued that the UK is being sidelined in the lucrative global games industry because we are ‘not producing people with the right skills’. But does this risk reducing education to training for work, and sidelining subjects that don’t interest UK PLC?

While advocates say the Year of Code will inspire the next generation of games developers, critics insist it could not only put pupils off, but ties schools too closely to industry-dictated job-related outcomes. Is building websites and apps really an educational pursuit on a par with maths or English, that must be taught to all? And with the likes of the hugely successful Raspberry Pi initiative already innovatively promoting the teaching of basic computer science in school, is the Year of Code with its statutory lessons more hype than help?

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