Pre-University CS education [barely properly researched at all, as yet ... comments welcome and desired] Computer Science (CS) is one of several academic disciplines and research areas in which many UK universities excel. CS began here, and, in any sane person’s vision of the world of the next few decades and beyond, it will increasingly underpin every aspect of business, education, government, science and leisure. We won’t fix climate change without reference to computational models, we won’t crack terrorism without rampant use of computational intelligence, and the UK will have no weight to pull on the world stage without a human asset base bubbling with degree-level expertise in CS and its kin. So why do I feel I need to write such things, expressing what seems to me, and many of my colleagues, obvious? What worries me, and prompts this article, is that CS is woefully misunderstood and misrepresented in our secondary education systems. This is chomping away at our undergraduate intakes, threatening the health of the discipline in our universities and consequently the future ability of the UK to compete globally in all areas of science and enterprise. Many of my colleagues in other disciplines may argue similarly for their own corner (physics, engineering, chemistry, and so on). I tend strongly to support such arguments, nevertheless here are two assertions I would most vigorously defend: (1) CS has a far longer reach than all other disciplines – it drives most if not all corners of business, science and technology. To be clear, I am not talking about the simple presence or mundane use of office PCs; I’m talking about the already essential and increasingly more pervasive roles of intelligent software systems and knowledge bases, but even more importantly, a skill becoming known as computational thinking, that is key to understanding, working with and controlling everything from home economics to global biodiversity. (2) Moreso than all other disciplines, hordes of potential computer science students – kids with the necessary aptitude and an endlessly rewarding potential career using the skills they would get in a CS or related degree – get turned off the subject (or never even turned on to the subject) in their teens. In the universities that do CS research, there are an unending portfolio of active research projects that most engaged students would (am I wrong?) recognise as exciting, and which can only be pursued by folk with the training provided in CS degrees. For example, CS researchers are finding better ways to automatically detect landmines from ground-penetrating-radar images, furnishing avatars with artificial emotions to help withdrawn children, simulating how business will be conducted in the future by autonomous corporations, deriving immensely improved diagnostic tests from medical data, developing trajectories for intercepting earth-approaching meteors, to cite just a paltry few examples. Meanwhile there are currently large scale projects investigating the nature of consciousness, ways to win on financial markets, the neurophysiololgy of music, how to build electronic systems that rewire themselves, and how to control machines via thought alone. In many cases these are interdisciplinary projects whose every element is essential, and this underlines what our educational infrastructure has increasingly missed over the past two-dozen years: when we consider the bread-and-butter skills for graduates and others who will shape the future, CS is ‘the new Maths’ and ‘the new English’ rolled into one. Our education system already recognises that this is true for what we call ‘ICT’; the problem is, the way ICT is currently delivered to our 14—19 year olds is frighteningly shy of what we need. Pupils learn about spreadsheets and printers, but they don’t learn about how we can make computers solve interesting and difficult problems by mirroring the way people think. Pupils get practice in understanding the basic logic behind the series of questions asked by an ATM, but they don’t learn about the fascinating science behind computer vision systems that automatically recognises who is using the ATM, whether they are misusing it, and informs the police if necessary. A level students may get to practise the programming behind a basic payroll application, but they won’t get the chance (and there is no reason they couldn’t) to write a program that may discover an important new gene target for liver cancer. I don’t want to bash teachers (despite the fact that my brother is one); it’s no fault of theirs, and perhaps it’s no fault of anyone’s. But we have to fix this. Computer Science is the study of complex systems, problem solving methods, and knowledge engineering. The planet is full of complex systems that need to be studied and understood, endless problems that we need machines to solve, and ever more knowledge that is worthless unless we harness and exploit it with mature database technologies and automated reasoning. CS covers all this and more. Current school ICT is like exposing kids to one Lego™ brick at a time, and never revealing what could happen if one plays with a buckletload. It’s like teaching kids to sit on a bike and never allowing them to pedal. It’s like (in this case exactly so) teaching how to use a word processor, a spreadsheet, or a chess-playing program, without hinting at how any of these programs do what they do – i.e. without revealing the underlying computer science concepts, and how those concepts carry over to systems of all kinds, not just computing devices – and failing to indicate how their own future could involve engineering better versions of each. So I believe that, despite brave and successful attempts regularly to expose our children to ‘ICT’, secondary and college education sports a Marianas trench where delivery of CS concepts should be. Our future is steadily slipping into it and will continue to do so, unless we fill this chasm with the delivery of skills that support an understanding of how computers work, what they are capable of now, what they could be capable of in the future, how we can make them do what we would like them to do, and the many fascinating issues involved. It is entirely possible to broach these areas at levels appropriate for schoolchildren, and in ways that can be immensely entertaining for all. Witness BBC’s extraordinary BAMZOOKI software, get yourself a Mindstorms™ kit, or play SimCity™. Sure, for many youngsters it won’t be their thing, but I reiterate that computational thinking needs to be regarded as basic skill on a par with reading and writing. A future lawyer or doctor may have hated their weekly CS hour at School, but, armed now with far more than the ability to send emails, they will much better understand the intricacies of lawsuits concerning autonomous robotic surgery. If our CS skills base continues on its existing curve, then indeed the plaintiff in such a case may be the patient, suffering the effects of an over-worked robot brain designer, who in turn is mismanaged by an MBA that doesn’t understand software creation, and who has to cover the tasks of three unfillable vacancies in her team. But if we address this situation, the plaintiff could be the robot surgeon herself.