Computing topics explained for parents
Computing runs from Year 1 to Year 11, moving from giving simple instructions to a robot to writing text-based code and studying how computers work. Along the way children create and organise digital content, learn to search for information and judge what they find, and learn to stay safe online. Key Stage 4 is set out in broad terms, so what your teenager studies depends on the courses their school offers.
Key Stage 1 computing
Key Stage 2 computing
- Acceptable online behaviour
- Collecting and presenting data
- Combining software to create content
- Computer networks and the internet
- Controlling and simulating physical systems
- Decomposition: breaking problems down
- Designing, writing and debugging programs
- Debugging algorithms and programs
- Checking what we find online
- Explaining how algorithms work
- The internet and the World Wide Web
- Online communication and collaboration
- Repetition and loops
- Reporting concerns online
- Selection: if and else
- Sequence in programs
- Search engines and ranked results
- Variables, input and output
Key Stage 3 computing
- Binary addition
- Binary and decimal conversion
- Boolean logic: AND, OR, NOT
- Comparing algorithms
- Abstraction and modelling
- Projects using several applications
- Lists, tables and arrays
- Digital artefacts for an audience
- Computer hardware components
- Spotting and reporting online concerns
- Online identity, privacy and security
- Functions and procedures
- Images and sound as binary
- Binary, text and ASCII
- Searching algorithms
- Software and system communication
- Sorting algorithms
- How a CPU runs instructions
- Text-based programming