Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the BBC's proposal to provide every child in Year 7 with the micro:bit codeable computer.

The Government welcomes this initiative from the BBC that will provide every child in year 7 with a free micro:bit codeable computer.

The national curriculum in computing, which was introduced in 2014, includes coding at all key stages. At primary school pupils are taught about algorithms and how to design and write codes to accomplish specific goals, using sequencing, selection and repetition. This is extended at secondary school where pupils are taught to use at least two coding languages to solve a variety of computational problems.

We want every student to have the opportunity actively to create new technology products. Our reformed programme of study for computing in the national curriculum emphasises the academic discipline of computer science. Through studying topics such as computational logic, algorithms and data representation, pupils are obtaining insight into how the digital technologies that they use every day work and understand how these technology products result from rational design processes.