Soundbytes: Learn about IT from the School of Hard Knocks

The study of computing in schools has never been so popular. All kids are now required to study for at least half a GCSE in the subject, and at A Level, computing has become almost as popular as physics. I thought this sounded really impressive, until I discovered that about five times as many kids take A Levels in sociology.

But some parents still feel computing lacks the intellectual rigour of traditional subjects like maths or languages. They reckon it?s an A Level in playing video games ? just as they think media studies is an A Level in watching television. Universities aren?t that keen either, and some prefer to take kids who haven?t done computing at A Level, because it saves them having to unlearn all the stuff they did wrong at school. It?s difficult to keep a school syllabus up-to-date, so many new undergraduates have never heard of intranets, and think Java is an island somewhere off Borneo (unless they?ve studied geography, in which case they haven?t a clue where it is, but can draw you a very pretty map using lots of coloured pencils).< The Associated Examining Board kindly sent me this year?s specimen papers, so I decided to try sitting them myself. As a former Cobol programmer, and now a specialist IT writer, I wondered how well my knowledge ? acquired in the workplace rather than the classroom ? would stand up. Someone had conveniently included the answers at the back ? a welcome innovation since I was taking O and A Levels ? so I was able to mark the papers myself.

The GCSE was a bit of a breeze, with straightforward questions about computerising tennis clubs, controlling machinery and identifying the components of a PC ? though it did contain a flow chart, something I hadn?t seen for about 10 years.

The A Level proved altogether tougher. While the GCSE seemed to be largely an exercise in applied common sense, which is what GCSEs should be, the A Level got distinctly techie.

The second paper, interestingly called paper three, might as well have been written in Greek for all I understood of it. What, for example, is lexical analysis, which apparently takes place within a compiler? I spent five years using compilers on an almost daily basis, and I?m blessed if I know. Then there were questions about binary trees, recursive definition and tree traversal algorithms. Sometimes, even looking up the answers in the back didn?t help. I always thought a ?fully normalised relation? was when they let your uncle out of the asylum and told him to keep taking the tablets. The crib at the back informed me that it means ?every determinant is a candidate key?. Thanks guys!

So I concentrated on the first paper, logically entitled paper two, which focused on real-life and user issues. It began by asking whether, and why, magazines and newspapers would be replaced by information retrieval systems (I was loyal to PC Dealer and said no), and what problems a company was likely to face in computerising. Oddly enough, the specimen answers didn?t include finding the cash to pay for it ? perhaps this is a sore subject with schools still struggling to teach computing on a few BBC Micros.

There followed a series of questions on data integrity, financial modelling, data input, networking, DTP, electronic trading, expert systems and GUIs ? where candidates were asked to cite three disadvantages but only two advantages. There were even questions on the potential dangers to the individual of storing information on a police computer, and the pros and cons of using computers for medical screening and teaching schoolchildren. For some reason, sympathetic responses about teacher redundancy earned no marks.

The only technical questions were about fixed versus variable length records, touch-sensitive screens and buffers ? where the definition ?retired colonels with droopy moustaches? was unaccountably not allowed. Overall, the paper showed a sensible approach to the use of computers in the real world.

Each of the papers I looked at counts for only a third of the total marks, the remaining third being allocated to a project which involves designing and implementing a small system. I reckon that for two-thirds of the course to focus on real-life issues is pretty good ? more useful than sociology, anyway.

If you want to know how I did, I got about 90 per cent in the GCSE, but only 65 per cent in the A Level ? not enough to secure a top grade. Perhaps it?s just as well that, when I went into programming, academic qualifications in computing were not required.