Informatics: Curriculum Consistency

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Have European countries implemented a nationally consistent Informatics curriculum? Is it uniform across different schools in the country?

Depending on the administrative structure of the respective country, the curriculum for any given subject is defined at different administrative levels. For subjects taught in an integrated way or as electives that do not count towards final grades, exceptions may apply.

The map shows at which administrative level decisions regarding Informatics are made or, put differently, how much leeway is given to instructors.

The scale is as follows:

School - Each school can decide which topics are covered and which competences are aimed for.
District - All decisions regarding topics and competences are made at school district level.
State - All decisions regarding topics and competences are made at the second administrative level (federal state/region).
Country - A central authority decides upon topics and competences which are then mandatory for all schools.

Estonia _{Wikipedia ⇗}

In Estonian schools, there exist different competing labels for Digital Literacy with slightly different meanings: Digitaalne Kirjaoskus (Digital Literacy), Infokirjaoskus (Information Literacy) and Meediakirjaoskus (Media Literacy). Informatics is refered to as Informaatika (Informatics) and Arvutiõpetus (Computer Studies).

Question: Is the informatics curriculum in your country consistent across all schools or are there local differences?

School - Each school can decide which topics are covered and which competences are aimed for.

As informatics has been an elective subject since 1996 and the national curriculum from 2000 did not specify content for any electives, our schools design the informatics course themselves as they see it fit for their teachers and pupils. The 2010 version of the national curriculum prescribes four elective informatics courses (grades 5, 8, 10 and 11), but schools have complete freedom to use it or ignore it. Our recent study shows that almost 20% of the schools do not provide any informatics course, 25% of schools provide the official informatics course “Computer as a tool" in 5th grade, less than 15% teach the official course “Information society technologies” in grade 8 etc. The schools with Russian language instruction tend to deviate more from national curriculum than Estonian-speaking schools.

Data: Mar 09, 2016

Informatics: Curriculum Consistency

Estonia Wikipedia ⇗

Estonia _{Wikipedia ⇗}