Raspberry Pi programming language more popular than French

The Raspberry Pi programming language, called Python, has overtaken French as the most popular language taught in primary schools, according to a survey of school pupils and parents.

Most significant was the importance even parents of the very young school children placed on learning programming.

Six out of 10 parents want their primary school age children to learn the coding language over French. While 75% of primary school children said they would rather learn how to program a robot than learn the modern foreign language.

The survey, which sampled 3,000 – ranging from five year-olds to parents – was commissioned by Ocado Technology.

More worrying is that the survey also found that secondary school pupils were less enthusiastic about learning computer programming , and over half saw a computer science GCSE is seen as an ‘easy option’ in their schools.

Paul Clarke, Director of Technology at Ocado, writes:

“Unfortunately this is an example of a wider and more serious problem that we face in terms of computer science in the UK not being treated as the serious engineering discipline that it undoubtedly is. The irony is that this is at a time when we are facing a massive shortfall in the number of software engineers and IT specialists who will be required to help build out the UK’s digital economy.”

Clarke believes the government should make computer science GCSE mandatory like maths and English.

Online shopping firm Ocado has also created Rapid Router, a free coding teaching resource which is being used by over 30,000 schools, pupils and teachers.

It is also releasing a series of videos by Computing specialists where they provide fellow teachers with tips on delivering the Computing curriculum.

The research was based on three online surveys conducted on behalf of Ocado Technology by OnePoll in August 2015: