Informatics education is essential to equip young people with the necessary skills to take an active part in our technology-driven and increasingly digital societies in a responsible and safe manner. European countries are gradually upgrading their school curricula to respond to the new reality and needs.
This Eurydice report provides a comparative analysis of the curricular approaches to teach informatics as a separate subject or integrated into other subjects throughout primary and general lower and upper secondary education in 2020/2021. It examines the main areas of informatics covered in the learning outcomes of the relevant subjects. It also looks at the qualifications held by the teachers of these subjects, and the training programmes and other support measures in place to support them. The report covers all the members of the Eurydice Network (the 27 EU Member States and Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey).
The analysis of existing competence and curricular frameworks with associated learning outcomes contributes to building a shared understanding and comparability. From this analysis, 10 core areas of informatics as a scietific discipline have been identified:
- Data and information
- Algorithms
- Programming
- Computing systems
- Networks
- People-system interface
- Design by development
- Modelling and simulation
- Awareness and empowerment
- Safety and security
Informatics is considered a distinct discipline when the learning outcomes for these areas are included in the curriculum in a separate informatics subject. In particular, the first chapter will compare the incorporation of informatics across the analysed countries. The second chapter will present the learning outcomes in the 10 content areas, while the third chapter will focus on the professional profile of teachers.