King's College London

Project interactive website and mini reports can be accessed at https://scari.sites.er.kcl.ac.uk/

Project final report can be downloaded here

Research into computing education has shown that female students are poorly represented in computer science qualifications, such as the computer science GCSE. More recently, data has emerged to show female students underperform compared to male students in computer science, when attainment in other subjects is controlled for. However, the reasons for this phenomenon and its impact on their future academic and career choices remains unclear.

This project explores the factors that explain female performance and participation in secondary school level computing with a particular focus on computer science (CS) exams. The study uses the National Pupil Dataset and School Workforce Census along with a student survey, this analysis was complemented with qualitative data collected from school managers, students and school documentation. Factors explored include student gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, their attitudes towards computing, self-efficacy beliefs and individual school computing curriculum, school type and geographical location.

The case studies, interviews and surveys focused on schools with a high uptake of GCSE computer science and high female representation, allowing us to better understand best practice in England. Nearly 5,000 surveys with young people were analysed, alongside 45 interviews with staff, students and parents, and qualitative analysis of 960 school documents. This study provides important findings to inform policies and effective educational interventions that reduce the participation gaps between male and female students in computing education.

This project is in collaboration with Prof Billy Wong at the University of Reading. The project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and you can view the project on Nuffield's website here.

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