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Rivington & Blackrod High School

ofsted

Computing

Contact

Head of Computing - Mr W Carter

wcarter@rbhs.co.uk 

Subject Overview

Through the curriculum we will encourage students to understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of Computer Science, enabling our pupils to become capable computer scientists who have a wide assortment of skills within their digital toolkit. These will include abstraction, decomposition, logic, algorithms, and data representation, all explored theoretically and through practical experience by designing, writing and debugging programs to solve problems.

Click here to view the Curriculum Overview 

Key Stage 3 Overview

We follow the National Curriculum for Computing at Key Stage 3.

National Curriculum Computing – Click Here

The National Curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:

  • Understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of Computer Science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
  • Analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
  • Evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
  • Are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

Key Stage 4 Overview

The Computing department offers two pathways at Key Stage Four, giving students greater scope and opportunity to develop their Computing and ICT skills.

  • GCSE Computer Science

GCSE Computer Science Specification – Click Here

In order to become proficient computer scientists, it is essential that students have knowledge and understanding of the field’s fundamental principles and concepts.  Learning to program is a core component of a computer science course. Students will work towards becoming competent at designing, reading, writing and debugging programs. Students will apply their skills to solve real problems and produce readable, robust programs.

  • CAMNAT IT

Cambridge National IT Specification – Click Here

Students will work towards understanding and applying the fundamental principles and concepts of IT, including the use of IT in the digital world, the Internet of Everything, data manipulation and Augmented Reality.

Key Stage 5 Overview

The Computing department offers two pathways at Key Stage Five, allowing students to gain a greater depth of knowledge in their chosen field. 

  • A LEVEL Computer Science

A LEVEL Computer Science Specification – Click Here

Students will be introduced to the internal workings of the Central Processing Unit (CPU), the exchange of data and will also look at software development, data types and legal and ethical issues. It is expected that students will draw on this underpinning content when studying computational thinking, developing programming techniques and devising their own programming approach in the programming project component. 

In addition, students will work towards understanding what is meant by computational thinking, the benefits of applying computational thinking to solving a wide variety of problems, the principles of solving problems by computational methods, the use of algorithms to describe problems; how to analyse a problem by identifying its component parts. 

  • BTEC Level 3 Information Technologies

BTEC Level 3 Information Technologies Extended Certificate Specification – Click Here

The objective of this qualification is to give students the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills in IT systems, systems management and social media in business. This will enable students to progress to further study in the IT sector or other sectors.  Students will explore the relationships between the hardware and software that form an IT system, and the way that systems work individually and together, as well as the relationship between the user and the system.  Students will also examine the structure of data and its origins, and how an efficient data design follows through to an effective and useful database.