Further to the other replies... I've had a look through the KS3 and the KS4 curricula and, in my opinion, there's nothing in there that is necessarily "bad". So if it isn't the subject itself that's turning people away, perhaps it is the people who teach it.
In my experience, all too often a school will get non-specialists to teach the IT subjects. I have seen math teachers, English teachers, music teachers and science teachers all actively timetabled for IT lessons - so I'm not talking about "cover" work. I do believe, as per another's comments, that having the "using office products" side of thing embedded into other subjects *should* free up the IT classes for more engaging topics, but these can only be made engaging and taught effectively if the teacher has a background to support the subject. I am not lambasting anybody here who may be an IT teacher at secondary level - if you are and your school is actively engaged in employing an IT specialist to teach IT, then I applaud you and your school... but please look around at your competition - the majority of them will, I have no doubt, fit my description above. As for the Alan's question: "Could it be that a strong bias towards proprietary products is not inspiring students?". I doubt it. Much and all as I share everyone's passion for Free Software (with capital letters), I cannot bring myself to say that "if it isn't Free Software it must be boring/uninspiring". There is a veritable tonne of really interesting and cool non-Free Software out there that could be used within secondary IT classes. I think we, as advocates and proponents of Free Software, should perhaps be taking a greater interest and should be actively trying to engage in discussion about what software *is* used, what non-Free Software *is available* and how it compares with the equivalent Free Software offerings. Incidentally, in case anybody here is interested, there is a project called "Digitial Freedom in Education and Youth" (DFEY.org) that looks really promising and could probably do with some more promotion and involvement from the likes of us lot. :) Wow! That was longer than I had thought it would be. Thanks for reading. :) Grant. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
