Computer science

These are exciting times to be involved in computing with its increasing use of creative resources, exciting courses that use professional software and an enhanced quality of teaching and learning.  So it doesn’t matter whether you are year 7 or year 13, an expert in HTML, Visual Basic or Publisher, computer science has something for you.

The  department consists of four fully equipped specialist ICT suites, one exclusively for the use of the sixth form. These suites are supported by a network manager and ICT technician who maintain a high level network that is available in and out of school.

All students are taught by a specialist team of ICT and computing teachers who are dedicated to providing a high level of teaching and learning, through a number of new and exciting topics and courses.

Curriculum by year group

Year 7 and 8

Year 7 and 8 follow a brand new bespoke scheme of work, designed to bring out their creative and technical skills in information technology and computing. Creative units include website design, animation, sound and video editing. Technical units include starch games design, code avengers and databases.

Year 9

Year 9 complete units to help them builds skills in preparation for the GCSEs. They will be encouraged to use a wide range of high level software across a broad ranges of tasks, so that they can adapt quickly to the different teaching styles that GCSE courses require.

GCSE

At key stage 4, students can opt to take the OCR Computer Science course as one of their GCSE options.

Students will learn the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, decomposition, logic, algorithms, and data representation. They will analyse problems in computational terms, including designing, writing and debugging programs, understand the components that make up digital systems, and how they communicate with one another and with other systems, and to understand the impacts of digital technology to the individual and to wider society.

The course is made up of three units

  • Unit 1: Computer systems
  • Unit 2: Computational thinking, algorithms and programming
  • Unit 3: Programming project

Assessment
Assessment is by two external examinations, each worth 50% of the overall grade.

Additional information

Progression map for year 10

Progression map for year 11