CS in Schools: Developing a sustainable Coding Programme in Australian Schools

Abstract

Digital technology is compulsory in schools in most states at most year levels in Australia. However, a recent survey of over 400 Australian schools in 2019 found that 96% have had difficulty hiring qualified technology teachers and 39% of schools have reduced the amount of technology education they offer. We have observed that there is a shortage of teachers who feel qualified to teach coding. To address this problem, we launched CS in Schools (see https://csinschools.com), a successful in-class professional development programme for teachers that helps schools build a robust digital technology capability in their students. Our programme matches pedagogy with content expertise, by matching a volunteer computing professional with a secondary school teacher, and helping that teacher develop their coding skills in the classroom over a six month period. This experience paper describes the approach we took in piloting our programme with 10 teachers in∼8 schools who taught over 1,100 students in 2019. We also describe our current scale-up in 2020 to work with around 60 teachers, around 40 volunteers, over 25 schools, and more than 6,000 students. Our goal is to work with hundreds of schools in 2021.