A quick summary of things that have changed on the site recently:

• A-Level lessons are now synchronised with Google Drive and the structure of the A-Level section has changed
• GCSE lessons are now synchronised with Google Drive
• Revision notes for GCSE unit 2.5 are now fully complete and 2.6 will be complete soon.
• KS3 Lessons are appearing on the site for programming - these are likely to change, I may just synchronise the one note we use instead of exporting lessons
• Coming soon......

...

...

​Business studies!

Exams are over, results are in and what an odd experience the last year has been.

OCR, the ever thoughtful people that they are, decided to send out certificates that you can print out for your students if you weren't naughty when doing the GCSE coursework to say well done for putting all that effort in for nothing. Remember, this is what you get for not cheating! Bonus.

The A-Level went well again this year and it was nice to see comments from the coursework moderator along the lines of "Christ, you're not cheating here either are you?!" The students did very well this year and several of our students have gone on to study Computing at university. Long may their beards grow.

As for GCSE, we improved for the third year running, proving that if you have a pair of complete nutters stood in front of you for two years, desperately trying to ram some information in your head in an interesting way you do actually learn something if you turn up and do as we ask. 

In all seriousness I could not have wished for a finer set of GCSE students than I had this year. They were a genuine pleasure to stand in front of several times a week and I enjoyed every lesson. I am exceptionally proud to say we had our first grade 9 this year and on paper two the student in question was 2 marks off 100%. I take no credit for that performance, the amount of work the student put in meant the success lies with them alone. I also look forward to welcoming many of them back next year as Year 12 students, where I will have to learn their names all over again because I won't recognise them in different clothes.

But what have we learned from the experience of changing to the "tougher" exams. Well, in summary:

• Coursework should never, ever come back. There is literally no way to enforce the rules, people will always push the boundaries in a pressurised, results driven environment. Please, don't put us through that any more. OCR, if you're reading, take note.
• The paper 2 results show that you either "get it" or don't and this is really dangerous for students who are achieving around a grade 4 because the results show you actually either get less than that or significantly more. Grade 4 wasn't popular, 3 and 5 were. There is no such split in results for paper 1.
• We now know what the grade boundaries are likely to look like. It's the same as before - you need a comparatively high percentage to pass CS than you do in many other subjects. This means either we are up against some serious beard across the country or life is just unfair. I'm yet to decide which.
• The way we teach programming and algorithms is reasonable but we need much more practice at it - now we have an idea what an exam looks like that task has become a lot easier.

So what's on the to do list this year? There's a lot of work to do on the site, but here's my thoughts going forwards:

• A-Level lessons are pretty much going to stay as they are. I want to find a better way of sharing them with other schools and I'll be looking in to a few ideas this year. The lessons on this site haven't been synchronised with the ones I'm currently using and there have been a fair few updates.
• GCSE - Unit 1 I'm quite happy with, it just needs finishing off and that'll be my immediate priority.
• Unit 2 - I'm in the middle of quite a significant re-write of a lot of the resources and revision material. I had a real change of heart about how I wanted to approach teaching this and I need to update the site to reflect the "new way."
• KS3 - for the first time ever I'm going to be sharing a set of resources for KS3 lessons that I'm developing for this year. In short you may notice Python makes me ill and scratch is enough to make me implode, so we start our students off with Microsoft Small Basic in Year 7 because it reminds me of the warm, comforting times when computers were simpler and crashed more frequently to keep things interesting. We follow this up with Visual Basic. If you're not a language snob then you'll look forward to the resources appearing here over the coming months.

And quite frankly I think that's enough for one year - we've got students to motivate...

Don't do that. It's a bad idea.

It's that time of year again where Year 11's across the country finally come to life and realise two weeks before their exams that they should probably do something... Maybe... to avoid exam disaster. Revision sessions suddenly double in size and miracles are performed as students memorise entire specifications and then ace the exam.

Or something like that.

In reality, what can you do in these last few weeks to improve your chances of passing or, better still, doing well? The good news is it genuinely isn't too late to make serious improvements to your knowledge and ability to do well... If you start now.

The plan, then, is this:

• Prioritise learning definitions. These are the easiest things to learn and worth the most marks in the exam as they are usually the beginning of every answer you need.
  • How? Make flash cards, visit the glossary of terms page, get someone to test you over and over again until you can parrot the answers back.
• Learn the sacred laws of CS exam technique and stick to them!!
  • Do NOT just write any old nonsense in your answers
  • Do NOT write lots and think that will somehow get marks from some spectacular spray of knowledge bullets at each question.
  • DO write your answers in the "what is it, how does it work/explain what that means, give an example related to the question" format as discussed in the GCSE exam technique page.
  • DO structure your long answer questions in the exact same way as all other questions - just do it 3-4 times! No waffle, no writing as much as you can
• Finally, do some past paper questions to get this technique dialled in your head.

Realistically, at this stage of the year that's about all you can do, but the difference it could make is incredible.

Some final advice:

• Above all - avoid stress, realise it is not the end of your life if you fail your exams and that you're far more likely to do poorly if all your energy is wasted on blind panic.
• Don't discuss your revision with friends - they'll make you worry you're not doing enough (you know whether you're doing enough or not).
• When you arrive at an exam, realise that you know what you know and there is nothing you can do to improve your knowledge any more at that point. Go in, give it your best and acknowledge that you're only human and it's not uncommon to forget things!
• When you leave the exam, try not to worry about other people talking about the answers - they may be right... or wrong! You'll find out in August and there's nothing you can do about it once you leave the exam room.

I don't envy you lot. Good luck and don't let us pressure you - if you can walk out of each exam knowing full well you prepared yourself as much as you could, did the best you could in the exam on that day, then you will do yourself justice and you can have no regrets and a clear conscience.

I made the decision in December to switch banks. The process is surprisingly painless and only takes 7 days, as a reward banks normally throw in a bonus of around £150 for joining them - which is great, it's literally money for nothing, and we all know that never happens in day to day life. So I joined HSBC and this is where the good news ends.

What followed is a superb, real world example of the things we teach about project management disasters, poor software development and security in GCSE and especially A Level CS every year. What unfolded in front of me was a story of total and utter abandonment of common sense, core software development principles and one of the most frustrating and mind boggling experiences of my life.

The HSBC banking app for IOS is, quite simply, one of the most appalling pieces of software to ever grace a phone screen. How it ever made it out of internal testing, let alone into public use and general release is beyond me. A bank the size of HSBC (worth £147 billion as of 08/02/2018) has the resources to create a truly wonderful, seamless user experience. Instead it decided to create:

• Needless complexity in the name of "security"
• Truly horrifying user interface design
• and my very favourite - absolutely no features of any use whatsoever.

I shan't go into their full website, but that too is an eye opening tour of hideous design fails. I'll leave that with just one example which illustrates it's failures perfectly - if you want to send a message to the bank, you can, but only if it is less than 2900 characters, which is approximately 350 words (a seemingly arbitrary limit) and if you use an exclamation then... that's it! You can't send it. Incredible.

So, during a phone call with the bank, they told me the reason the app was so poor is because it's new. Apparently, and please make sure you're sitting down for this, it is better and has more features than their old app.

Wow.

I can only begin to imagine the horrors HSBC customers must've put up with before their latest revelation was released upon the poor, unsuspecting public. I can also conclude that their previous app must have had a feature count of 1. That's not a typo. 

Computing history teaches us the following things:

• No system is ever perfect, devoid of bugs and feature rich to the point of being "complete"
• When it comes to banking, safety critical and similar systems where failure would be catastrophic, then once a system works you leave it alone save for maintenance. 
• When a system works, and works well, you do not replace it without very, very good reason and a robust understanding of the benefits of making a new system and the potential issues that the new system itself may cause
• Finally, if you do have a genuine need to make new software then it has to be better than the system you plan to replace. This is the essential bit here...

You, I and your parents have also made many individuals very, very rich in the name of improvement through software development. Do I need to go any further than the £20 billion wasted on "digitising" the NHS only for precisely nothing to be actually developed of any use. Seriously, I could not even begin to explain where £20 billion gets spent on a project like that, even taking into account some incredible nights out, special dinners and amazing holidays for all involved, you'd still have change from £1 billion.

It makes the £300 million that Nationwide spent updating their IT systems seem like a bargain - and they were very brave in fairness, considering the consequences of even the smallest error.

This is why, believe it or not, much of the infrastructure we rely on day to day and indeed wouldn't even think about, runs on software that was developed in the 1970's and 80's - you know, a time when computers were delivered on the back of several lorries and needed you to knock a few walls down and phone the electricity provider to come and fit new cables to your building to make them work.

Want to fire a nuclear missile from the USA? Then you'll need an 8 inch floppy disk and some 1960's mainframe skills (link)

What about landing a plane at a small Parisian airport? Put your life in the hands of Windows 3.1! (link)

And on it goes - why did several banks stop working last year when people tried to use their cards? All down to IT system failures, and likely due to the fact that the code they rely on is literally older than you and me put together.

Trust me, even the US government isn't stupid enough to risk the lives of millions at the hands of a dodgy computer system - 1960's it may be, but it works, is robust as coffin nails and has been designed quite literally to withstand a war happening. It isn't going to break, it doesn't need replacing because its old.

So you need a good reason to change and, if HSBC are to be believed and their old app was genuinely that awful then they'd got over the first hurdle - a genuine need to change. On to the next phase!​

It seems so obvious, doesn't it? Before you potentially spend millions, you should probably stop and think about:

• What was wrong
• What you're going to improve
• How you'll do it.

The idea here is that you arrive at a point where you have an absolutely robust, cast iron set of objectives that become absolute gospel throughout the project. This is the list of things you must deliver, these are the deal breakers, the principles by which you work.

When projects wander from these tight, clear, focused objectives then you get failure. How much failure depends how poor your objectives were in the first place and then how poor your project management is. But failure you will get.

In the case of HSBC I can only imagine the conversation went something like this:

"What do we want the new app to do?"
"Well... banking, innit?"
"What do people do with their bank?"
"Look at their money."
"'Look at money' I'll add it to the list. Anything else?"
"Nah. That's it."
"Shall we jazz it up with some of those terrible pictures you see with awful motivational captions underneath?"
"It's a winner, it's like a professional meme."
"Pub?"
"Yeah, go on."

​Nothing else could explain what followed.

Let's not jump the gun, before we even get to use the app there are hurdles to jump, challenges to overcome, stamps to be licked and eyes to be washed after being forced to look at this abomination.

This is the process you go through to use their app for the first time:

1. Open the app, be confronted by boy jumping in the sea for some inexplicable reason.
2. Click sign up
3. Enter your telephone banking number (does anyone telephone bank any more??) which you have waited for to come through the post - remember that, you've already waited over a week to just get to this point.
4. Create a user name
5. Password
6. Verify you're who you say you are via an email, click the link, continue
7. Type in a code sent by text to verify your phone number
8. Then.... get this.... wait for yet another code to arrive by post. I'm surprised they don't offer a telegram service just to be doubly sure.

So that's you done for another week. You've gone through all that to then find out you can't actually use it. Ingenious. 

What's wrong with this?

• Double postal verification - you've already had one secret code from them, one more does not add any more security, you've already proven you're in receipt of the post by having the first code
• Three separate methods of verification for various means
• Just layer after layer of needless complexity in the name of security.

Don't get me wrong, security is very important, but overbearing security is worse than seemingly more lax security. It puts people off, provides more avenues for users to become confused or go wrong and ultimately leaves the user having a genuinely poor experience. You jump through less hoops to get a passport. 

I've been with many, many banks and this is by far the most absurd set up I've ever been through. I've since switched to another bank and managed to get set up on their app in 5 minutes without once having to wait for the post to arrive. Every bank has a vested interest in fraud prevention and security. Every other bank has proven you can achieve this without users handing over their very soul.

The irony is, if someone did manage to set up as me on this app... they wouldn't be able to do any damage because it doesn't let you do anything anyway! Security through obscurity...

The river of terrible keeps flowing.

Once you're in, after verifying yourself for the 3rd or 4th time, just to be sure, you get the wonderful log in screen above. Believe it or not, this is an improved version released a few days ago and it's still awful.

First, if you feel the need to star out information for privacy on the home screen for "security" reasons... Don't put it there in the first place! To contrast, here is the log in screen for Natwest:

Spot the difference:

• No personal details - there is no need to show them, let alone star them out
• Clear, clean, consistent design with no unnecessary information, images or text.
• Professional look and feel right from the off. Only show what is absolutely necessary for the function of each screen.

They read the design book didn't they?

HSBC just keep giving the gift of awful, because if you cast your eye down the screen you see what looks like, smells like and is effectively a... banner advert? 

My eyes nearly fell out of my head the first time I spotted this. What possible need or reason can there be for a link to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme on the home page of a banking app? It's utterly, utterly bizarre and just paints a picture of an app that is poorly thought out, poorly designed and doesn't fill you with a feeling of trust. Would you advertise so boldly that you'll probably need some financial compensation at some point?

​Ominous isn't it...

So we get into the app. Finally.

Things continue to fall apart. 

On Iphone X, the interface doesn't take into account that there is a notch at the top of the screen. Consequently, titles quite literally fall off the top of the screen and the log off button is placed so close to other features in the notification area that it quite often doesn't respond to touch.

How long would that take to test? How much money do banks and their developers have? The answer is enough to buy several of every phone on the market today and about 10 minutes of testing. Worse, is that you don't even need to spend £1000 to test your app on an Iphone X. You need to click "build" in XCode and it'll show you on screen what it'll look like.

This means one thing, one thing that occurs again and again throughout this sorry tale:

• The developers of this app, and HSBC, are completely aware of all of these faults and quite simply.... don't care. Not one bit! If you release an app this bad, you know it's bad. You also know you couldn't be bothered to fix those problems because you think.... its ok for customers to use a total and utter garbage application!

Nice!

One final kick in the teeth is the contact section of the app. If the bank respond to you (this is after you've logged into the full site, navigated the awful there, then formatted your message to fit in 22 words or less, removed punctuation, done a very special dance, done the Mr Tumble magic and off it goes) then you wouldn't know.

There are precisely zero notifications in the app, no notice of new messages, not even a change of the icon to indicate new mail. Nothing.

This is why for a week I didn't realise they'd sent me a message. Why would I? Even when you press the contact icon and are taken to the "inbox" there is still no method of indicating new messages. It would literally have taken 5 lines of code to put a number next to the icon or word "inbox."

But my favourite bit, for a contact section of an app, is once you realise you have a message, then want to reply to it, you..... can't!

Off to the website again with you! Another usability win and clearly a "feature" too far.

So the app passed the design stage and the developers would've brought along their work for HSBC to try out and, seemingly, they all sat around nodding approvingly and released it.

It's at this point, the last chance to save planet earth before it's recycled, the bit in the life cycle where you can still right the wrongs, that they just went "yeah... that'll do. Send it out."

What should have happened is large amounts of hysterical laughter as they picked up the phone to their legal department to begin legal proceedings for breach of contract at the sight of such a woeful app.

This is where my favourite part of my phone conversation with them comes in:
"The banking app is totally free of features I'd expect in a modern banking app and are provided by every other provider I can think of."
"Mr Davidson, we developed the new app because the old one didn't meet the needs of our customers!"
"And the new one does?!"
"Yes, it's already got more features!"
"Tell me, exactly which single feature did the old app have that wasn't meeting peoples needs, because I cannot find a single, useful feature anywhere."
"We've added a feature where you can report a lost or stolen card."

"that's... a feature? A useful feature? One I'd use every day? What exactly are the priorities in developing this app?"
"Oh there's lots of features planned for the future!"
"Like what?"
"I can't tell you."
"Can't or don't know?"
"Well, there's lots of things coming, we just don't know when..."

In any sane organisation, at this point, someone would make the glaringly obvious decision:

"We cannot release this. It's not ready."

Because... no improvement is better than woeful attempts at improvement.

The fact is that 11 years after the release of the first capable smart phone, there are no excuses any more. Companies literally live and die by the quality of their applications.

Mobile is the way people work now, more and more we conduct our affairs solely through a phone and if it can't be done, then we either don't do it or move to a service that can. We have over a decade of experience, the bad mistakes have been made and everyone knows what users expect apps to look and feel like and exactly how we expect them to work.

Microsoft spent millions in the 1990's conducting experiments into user interface design, finding out how to get novice users to make the least mistakes and be the most productive with the least barriers to progression or work. The result was Windows 95, one of the biggest leaps in OS usability until IOS came along in 2007. We have learned - usability is not a new field, interface design is a trail well blazed by many thousands of applications.

If HSBC were a start up company today, they'd be dead in the water.

I've been humbled by the whole experience - the fact that this type of experience is happening today, that it is even possible for it to still happen really blew my mind. Worse, I learned a valuable lesson:

Never, ever assume that software is actually good before you've used it. Especially if you plan to move your banking to an organisation that seem to believe you don't deserve to use an application which provides you the ability to actually do some, er... banking?

​Crazy.

Lets be realistic about the situation. You've spent the last five years having the time of your life at secondary school. Well, maybe not the time of your life if you didn't enjoy it. Er... You've done time. Yep, that should be a good catch all term to describe it...

So you've done five years and you're coming up for release, or "graduation" as it's more popularly known, and all you've got to do to set yourself up for life on the outside is pass your exams. Shouldn't be too hard, right? You've had eleven years of practise leading up to this point anyway, so it'll be a doddle! The only thing standing in your way is that over used and rarely understood word:

Revision.

You see, the problem with revision is as teachers we stand there in front of you saying all manner of wonderful catch phrases:

"If you do more preparation and revision, then you'll improve!"
"You really need to revise more for your tests."
"You need to do at least an hour a day or you won't get through it all."
"You have two choices, revise yourself to death or fail and die."

Maybe the last one was made up.

But you get the point! My problem with this is that we bash you round the head with the word constantly for five years and very rarely does anyone actually improve to the point we'd like. Why is this? Simple, so rarely do we actually explain what revision is. Worse, teachers are terrible for passing on their stress to you as students. This is very naughty and ends up with situations reminiscent of The Simpsons where Homer is strangling Bart:

"Why aren't you passing your exams at the highest level so I look good??!!"
"I don't know!!"
"Why aren't you a machine?!!!!!!"

You get the point.

I genuinely try not to do this with students. If I grind you into the ground with stress you're likely to do badly anyway. If I say lovely things all year when you are, in fact, utterly terrible then you'll fail thinking you were amazing. Its a balancing act of just enough encouragement mixed with a bit of reality. I'm better at the reality part...

Before we go any further, I need to make a confession to you. A confession in the hope you'll realise that I am human and was indeed once your age.

When I was at school I came across as being very, very lazy. I called it "being efficient."

But I wasn't stupid. Well, not all the time anyway.

It felt as if I ran on batteries from Poundland and in order to not run out of power, I'd apply myself when necessary and only at those times. In other words - if it needed doing, I'd do it properly. If it didn't then... it got a lot less attention.

The thing to realise here is:

• I could recognise what was important to my future or needed my attention
• I never aimed for anything less than the best when I put my mind to it

In my ten years of teaching I've come across lots of students who were just like I was. However, I also come across students every single year that just baffle me. These are the students who:

• Have literally no understanding of the need for education
• Don't have a clue why you need to do well
• But worst... always aim to "just pass."

This is the single most stupid and dangerous thing anyone could ever do.

If you aim to simply do "just enough," to just scrape through on the last mark of the last question in the paper than you are playing an extraordinarily dangerous game that you are more than likely going to lose in the most spectacular way. 

I don't understand it. You've worked for 11 years of your life to get to this point. That's over 2/3 of your entire living life. That's a long time, right? And at the first point in your life where it really, really matters you're going to go "can't be bothered."

Wow. Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen! Thanks for coming! Hope you enjoyed the show.

That's it? 15 years to get to a point where we just shrug our shoulders and consign all our potential in the bin and then most likely live a life of bitter resentment for the education system that "failed" you.

Some facts to understand:

• We may not all be born equal, but you were born into a country where you are lucky enough to be provided with a free education which treats everyone equally and gives everyone opportunity.
• It is solely down to you and your motivation how much of that opportunity you want to use, to take with you into later life.
• At the age of 15/16 you quite truthfully have the potential, opportunity and ability to do absolutely anything. You may not believe it, I hope you do because realising it in retrospect is too late. However....
• ...scarily you have the ability to choose not to. You have the option to choose to waste the opportunities you don't even know you have yet.
• But most important of all is this:

It's not too late.

At this point in the year it's not too late to change your outlook, to change your mind about how you view "studying" and that maybe it's not just saddo's and weird kids that want to succeed. Whether you like it or not, we are all human and we all have a love of rewards, a love of success, a love of doing well. You can't tell me you don't - you might not feel it in school but you felt it when you thrashed your mate 6-0 on Fifa. It's the same thing. You won - you felt good.

I'm not going to tell you how long I spent revising for my exams. But I will tell you that in my final year of University, myself and a group of 6 friends managed to, for an entire week solid:

• Get up (a feat in itself) and go sit a 9am exam
• Come back to the house, learn as a group an entire module of study (that's a whole term or more of work)
• Go through all the past exams
• Go to bed
• Repeat.

We all passed those exams. Not just by the skin of our teeth, we passed them well.

One of those people in that group also did his dissertation in 1.5 days. He'd given up, had enough, was going to quit university - right at the death. The exact same as a student giving up when it's GCSE time.

I managed to convince him to at least do something. He stayed up all day, all night and handed in what turned out to be quite a good project in AI.

He's now the head teacher of a behavioural school.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you're a student who:

• Thinks it's not worth bothering because you've left it too late
• You don't understand things anyway
• You'll never get anywhere in life
• You don't like school or exams

Then you should realise you still have a chance to change your mind and realise that you could make a decision which completely changes your life. Oh and makes you filthy rich in the future.

​So what do you do? Simple, it's time to talk revision...

I'm going to upset your parents.

You cannot revise for hours on end, day after day. You shouldn't be drawing up absurd timetables, colouring in each day a different colour for each subject and then feeling awful when you, strangely, don't behave like a machine and stick to it.

Let's understand you're human. Worse, you're a teenage human which means you're a total nutter with no sense of self preservation and an insatiable need to have a good time.

So we won't be shutting you in your room for days on end thinking somehow the knowledge will fall into your mind from the books you never open.

Revision is also not reading. If you've spent the last 5 years wondering why you get terrible results even though you read your book for 6 hours before the test... it's because you read your book for 6 hours before the test.

Here, based on real science (genuinely) is Mr Davidson's Lazy Persons Extremely Effective Revision Technique. (C) (Tm) (BSc Hons.)

While you are still in school:

1. When you get home from school, get your books out and read over what you did that day. ONLY what you did that day. This will take 10 minutes at most.
2. At the end of each week, read through what you did that week. This will take you 30 minutes.
3. At the end of 3-4 weeks, go over what you did in that 3-4 weeks. This is no more than 1 hour's work. Split it up, don't do it all in one sitting.

Why?
We form memories through repetition, routine and familiarity. If you don't revisit your learning then those memories are much harder to form, or simply disappear altogether. This reading exercise basically keeps them "familiar" to you and makes your life much, much easier.

When it's revision time:

1. Never, ever do more than 20-30 minutes at once. You physically don't have the attention span. Don't waste your time
2. Every 30 minutes, go do something completely different. Water the dog or take the plants for a walk.
3. Test yourself! Get a copy of the exam spec - give it to someone, make them test you! Get exam questions and do them. Give your book or revision notes or revision guide to your ever loving parents and ask them to test you. Test, test, test.
4. Write down a list of everything you DIDN'T know. The things you got right we are not interested in - well done, you know them. Do not ever, ever, ever waste your time going over everything or things you already know.
5. Go away and learn the things you got wrong or didn't know. How? Flash cards and mind maps are generally thought to be the most effective. Some people learn really well by saying things out loud over and over. Whatever works for you, do it.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 as much as you can.

That's it. I'm sorry to say there is no magic here, but if you are prepared to put the time in... then magic will indeed happen.

So rant over. Please open your minds, think about your futures and have faith in yourself. If you can't believe in your ability, then remember I still do and you need to come and talk to me about it!

Oh and... don't leave it until later, start now.

Well that was a surprise, wasn't it?!

The Ofqual consultation came out today, and to our sheer, wide eyed, awestruck surprise we discovered that... they did exactly what they fancied doing! Click here to read the riveting document explaining their decision for yourself.

Ofqual have decided, like most decent schools had felt for years, that they've had enough of the cheating and that the coursework for both 2018 and 2019 GCSE entries will not count. However, you've still got to do it...

Why? Because it's part of the specification, which means if you don't cover it then technically we can't say you've completed the GCSE. There is also the small point that you desperately need programming skills in order to pass your unit 2 exam.

In many ways, this is the right decision. Now your grade will not be affected by other schools deciding to break the rules and do what they like. It also means that your grade is now entirely in your hands, based on the performance you put in during the summer exams.

It's the implications for the future that are more interesting/worrying:

• No one has a clue what to actually do past 2019. Currently, the best Ofqual have is "we'll just do the same again if we can't make our minds up."
• None of the exam boards seem to agree with each other
• Some of the proposed solutions are wildly convoluted...
• ...and are still wide, wide open to cheating and students just being drilled into how to pass a test

OCR have the right idea here, by the look of it, in that we still do a programming task in the lessons we have with you but you then have to answer questions on the work you have done in the exam. This is fair enough - most candidates that cheat don't actually have a clue what their code does so wouldn't be able to explain this in the examination anyway. 

In the meantime, what does it mean for you and what should you do going forwards?

• You really have not wasted your time. Students desperately need to learn programming skills for the Unit 2 exam and this experience has gone a long way in improving your ability to break a problem down and produce sensible code.
• You will still have to complete and hand in your work.
• You will not receive marks for your coursework
• Your work will still be sent to the exam board and we have to fill in and sign paperwork to prove you have had time to do the tasks

If you want to know more, have a read of the the links below. Otherwise, carry on doing as you're asked and be thankful you can now begin your exam preparation just that little bit sooner.

Links:

• Ofqual's report
• OCR's Response
• OCR FAQ and Guidance

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It had to happen didn't it? 

If you didn't know, the Government in its infinite wisdom and never ending "drive to raise standards" decided to get tough on coursework. This meant that for most subjects it was promptly placed in the bin and, lets face it, this was actually a really good move.
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Why?

Because I'd wager about 10% of any given piece of work was actually the product of a student.

The sad fact is that schools and sometimes students (if they're feeling particularly weird) are desperate for results. Desperation for results ends up in people finding creative ways in which to make improvements and coursework was the absolute worst for this kind of thing. Doing an essay? Go through 15 "drafts" and each time just add in what I tell you. Languages work? Lets work on the answers before hand or memorise some text from Google Translate. When I took German GCSE I did it because my mother spoke it for her job and I knew all I'd have to do for my coursework would be to memorise whatever I could get her to write for me.

Maths used to have coursework and I know for a fact that it simply became a badge of honour between parents who all wanted to be the first to find the formula for the given task, which then went round the rest of the class like wildfire in an improved version of what happens in form and break times across the country every day as students trade their homework to others.

Don't get me started on homework.

Then there's computing. Out of everyone, we really were the worst because it was quite simply a case of being able to Google the correct code and you could copy and paste an acceptable solution to most GCSE tasks together in a few weeks. "Controlled conditions" meant that students were only subtly told what to do rather than just being given the answer, because you feel less guilt cheating that way. Failing that, lets write a "this is oddly similar to the real thing" practise task which we then change a few lines of text in and hand in as our "real thing."

Last year my students did it properly. No, really. I didn't help them write their code. I didn't tell them what to write and I didn't decide to have students work "miraculously" improve over night when it was clear they were going to fail. This goes against what happens in a huge number of classrooms up and down the country. As a result, my students coursework was reasonable. Not poor, but reasonable. Some students absolutely smashed it, they were natural programmers, but most just did a competent job - and this is key.

There are few natural programmers.

There are even fewer natural programmers who show it at GCSE.

But, now sit down when I tell you this, somehow the average coursework results were rather high and would contradict that.

How odd!

Turns out there had been a lot of "accidental assistance" up and down the country. As a result, my students actually performed absurdly well in the exam but proportionally not as well in the coursework.

Nationally, that kind of thing looks rather odd. Why? Well, and stay seated, it seems that nationally students perform far, far better in coursework than in their exams. How can this be? Is it that they're simply better at coursework than exams? 

No. Sadly, its their teachers who are better at coursework than exams.

So the Government set out on its crusade to put this right and in many ways it looked like a good start had been made. The marks went down from anywhere around 60% all the way down to a maximum of 20% of your final grade. Then they banned the internet - which has to be one of the most absurd things in the history of poor decision making. Think about it:

• You can't ban the internet outside of lessons
• You can't erase a students mind as they walk out of the door, although some would argue this is a built in feature of most teenagers.
• You therefore can't stop anyone going home and magically getting better at the task or, blow me down, finding the solution online

And that's exactly what hundreds of students have done. They've done what intelligent, modern teenagers do - realise that the answer to most things is on Google and if it isn't, it will be when they dig around in a few forums.

Now, the Government isn't that thick, they asked Ofqual/JCQ to threaten inspection visits to schools on a random basis and also if their exam results were obviously worse than the coursework results.

Which was good, right?

Sadly, no.

• The visits were/are a joke - inspectors can simply be told "we're not doing it" and they'll leave. Other good excuses include "we've already finished" and "no, sir, we didn't give them a second over 20 hours and no cheating has taken place here." 
• Schools get many, many days notice of a visit. It is not difficult by any stretch of the imagination to put your house/school/excuses in order and cover up your tracks given this much notice. This is why Ofsted don't phone you a week in advance any more, because when they did this magical mist descended upon schools which oddly made them look different.
• Schools ignored this threat. Not just a little bit, but totally ignored it.

The worrying thing is that this coursework has been leaked from a school. The only way to get the tasks is if you've got a log in to the exam board of your choice and the rules are clear:

• It doesn't go home
• You can't let kids put it on a memory stick
• The internet should be off so they can't share it, email it, stick it on cloud storage
• Did we mention all you have to do is stop them taking it home?

So someone took it home....

​....

....and lo and behold solutions appeared on the internet. 

This just drives me up the wall because there are schools out there that do it properly and really do play by the rules. We're one of them.

Having taken a good look at the tasks when they came out, we took the calculated risk of taking a significant time out of our schedule to properly prepare our students to plan and write code unassisted. We spent hour after hour learning not only how to plan code on paper but then go and implement it in our chosen language. We didn't start the coursework until we were convinced the majority had it in the bag and had the tools they needed to code for themselves. 

They were confident - are confident. They've built up, week after week, a set of skills that mean they can tackle most problems. The down side is we now have far less time than other schools to prepare for the exam, but that's ok because this is still 1/5 of their marks, right?

Er...

Not any more.

You see, what the government giveth, the government taketh away. We've spoken before about the rush to fill our schools with "real computing" because we all know there's a huge skills shortage and technology is going to only grow. 

As Kryten once said, "An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor flaws."

You see, the thing about CS is.... it is neck beard central. It is an area of study that is so devoid of people skills and personality that it could quite easily form a weird form of black hole which simply sucks the very soul out of the universe, from which no one even remotely interesting will escape past the event horizon, leaving behind a world that is eerily quiet as the remaining population stay indoors for fear of accidentally socialising with someone and dissolving from the awkwardness as a result.

This means there is a shortage of people who want to teach it, before we even get to the problem of those teaching it actually being any good - or at least ones not hung up on their own ideologies which they spend their time at CAS conferences massaging their ego along with other like minded personalities.

So what happens when you suddenly erase ICT from schools and push everyone into CS even though they haven't the faintest idea about computing and can't program let alone teach it? (hey everyone, best learn Python because that's what we do when we don't think for ourselves and like to just jump on the bandwagon!)

What happens is people take the path of least resistance.

And lessons are a car crash.

And people cheat.

A lot.

So I'm not sure the blame entirely lies at the door of the government, but teachers have to take some responsibility also. As a famous meme said - "you had one job." That job was simple - don't cheat, don't let kids put the task online and don't share answers to it.

Because when you do, the few institutions that do it properly now have to explain to students who have played the game, come along for the ride, believed in you, followed your instructions and done a bloody good job off the back of this that their work is now, quite literally, worthless.

Sorry, kids. At least we still have our morals intact.

If you didn't know already we love Office 365 and as we move forwards we'll be making more and more use of the tools that it offers. If you didn't already know, all our students have an Office 365 account. To log in, simply visit:

www.office.com

and sign in with your school email address and your normal school password. For example, if my user name was "davo345" then my school email would be "davo345@cttc.staffs.sch.uk"

Office 365 offers you:

• 5 free copies of office to install on any PC, laptop or tablet device you own, so no more excuses that you don't have Office!
• 1TB of free online storage (think iCloud) called "OneDrive"
• Access to Office online applications so you can use Word, Powerpoint etc through a web browser.

We will be making use of something called "Forms." With the exception of exam based assessments, all our tests will now be conducted online, through a web browser. At the start of the lesson, just check your email and I'll have sent you a link to the latest quick test.

Once complete, we will be able to see how the class handled the test, any areas of weakness we have and you will receive personal feedback by the next day via email once again. Some questions may mark themselves automatically and for those questions you will receive feedback immediately after clicking the submit button.

By using this system we can regularly do a quick check of your knowledge, provide you with valuable feedback and keep a much better track of your progress throughout the GCSE course. I hope you appreciate the new tools we're using and get used to them quickly - go check them out!.

In my haste to run away and have a baby, I may have neglected to notice that the set up for visual studio has changed quite a bit since I wrote my Visual Basic lessons. If you follow the instructions below you shouldn't have any issues getting it working - the actual programming techniques haven't changed.

Step 1 - Google "Visual Studio Community Edition" and download the installer. When its downloaded, open it and select ONLY the ".NET Desktop Development" option. Then click Install.

Step 2 - Wait for all the downloading to happen...

Step 3 - When the installer is done, reboot.

Step 4 - When you reboot, open visual studio and when prompted - sign in with your SCHOOL email address and password. Remember your school email is username@cttc.staffs.sch.uk. Your password is the same as the one you use to log in at school. Do NOT miss this step.

Step 5 - Go to File - New - Project...

Final step - on the LEFT, select Visual Basic (if you don't, it'll all look very weird to you later on. Then select "Windows Forms App" from the list on the RIGHT. From there, you're good to go.

In recent updates:

• A Level:
  • All A level lessons are now online
  • Some A level lessons have been updated to reflect new content/exam questions. If you do find an out of date one when compared to the shared area, let me know.
  • Revision notes to come next year
• GCSE:
  • A new "glossary of terms" so you can quickly look up a definition - definitely under construction and work on going!
  • All revision notes for 1.1 - Systems Architecture and 1.2 - Memory are now complete
  • 1.4 - Networks is mostly complete, lots of new content

Lots of other smaller updates include:

• Exam material
• Menu changes to make it more intuitive
• Corrections and formatting fixes