Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to include artificial intelligence awareness in the education curriculum.

The computing curriculum, introduced in 2014, aims to ensure that all pupils understand the fundamental principles of computer science, information technology and digital literacy.

As set out in the programme of study for the computing curriculum, computing has deep links with mathematics, science, and design and technology, and provides insights into both natural and artificial systems. The core of computing is computer science, in which pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. Further detail about the curriculum content is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study.

The curriculum was deliberately designed to avoid over prescription, and reduce the risk of the content becoming outdated, given the speed of development of digital skills and technological advance. Programming, algorithms, and the use of information technology, are taught to pupils in key stage 3, which provide the foundations for pupils to acquire further knowledge about artificial intelligence (AI).

This government wants every child in England to receive a world class computing education. That is why we created the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), backed by £84 million of government funding, to improve the quality of computing teaching. The NCCE have created 500 hours of free, high quality teacher resources, which align to the computing curriculum. This includes a unit of learning on AI which is taught to year 8 pupils.