Computer Science outside of school? (Leaving Cert)

Needs to get sign off on the group work project. If your own school days no, then only recourse is to contact other schools and see if he can do the group work there. That's my read on things anyway. I think it's coming to a crunch point all around the country with kids achieving at a high level attending CS Clubs. But not getting access to LC.

Then again, it's the same with Music, Art or Sport which a kid mightn't have in their school.

Will he fail the LC course if he doesn't have the ALT completed?

I would say not, it's not examinable. The ALTs are there to learn the skills for working in groups/software development and the project for LC, which is individual.

For project work a teacher has to sign off, this is fairly standard. There is no other way to guarantee the work is the actual work of the students. The exam has to be facilitated in a school too. Very few schools currently offering it, terrible really, it's a brilliant course and a joy to teach.

I love it, great course. Modern, well thought out and very broad. You can be making a wearable device one day and fighting over the use of AI in warfare the next. The kids love it too. So much scope to persue their own interests in the ALTs and project.

My programming was very specific to a purpose and not formally learned and I had no problem with the standard required, python is pretty easy to learn. I did a good bit of reading myself and found that the cpds were all excellent. Your background might be more useful than you think!

No harm getting your degree checked by the Teaching Council, that's kind of the first step, you'll know what you can teach then (more to do with the maths than comsci, they seem to just be hoping enough STEM teachers will just upskill)

Fantastic, I really couldn't recommend it enough, I've taught so many subjects over the years and it really is the best. Hopefully you get good word back, we need more people who want to do the job!

A school will snap you up with maths and com sci and most dips are working their own hours or plenty of sub hours so you'll be earning a bit too!

If you are in the east feel free to pm me of your do go through with it, I can get you a list of schools that offer it!

It's with Kilmartin Education Services - https://kes.ie/home.html

My son attends a weekly online (MS Teams) grind at €30 a go and then a 1 day revision session each holidays. So far he's done Halloween and Christmas, we've the February one booked and I assume there will also be one at Easter. Then thevsame again next year. We drive from Dublin the night before and get a hotel for €90 - 100, then drive back after the class. The tutor is Barry Ryan and he seems to be pretty good. Son's school will have to host the exam which they are on board with, 3 of them doing it and Kilmartin will sign off on the project work. It's a considerable investment of time, effort and money, so he'd better do well, but the tutor has said he only gets H1s so that's a positive. My son has been coding for years and that's what he wants to do in college so it makes sense to do it.

It was academy of code I had planned on him doing it with but they had to shut it down.

Plenty of schools would be happy to offer Computer Science, but don't have anyone to teach it. People who have a CS degree work in industry and if they are good at it can make better money there. So most teachers will come from upskilling.

I know students stung by this before as recent as last year having been given assurances so I'd be looking for a letter from the dept to confirm. I can't let lads well able to do work at home to code as I'd have no idea whos work it was. 10 week project, 3-4 hours a week with a very specific write-up and signoff? I'd be very careful with this!

The H1 thing is nonsense

Maybe they are but the word we have from in-service is that it all needs to be signed off as work done in front of the teacher, to even be wary about letting them work on it for homework and certainly not large chunks, like ok to edit a section but should be appearing with large tracks of code without us seeing the progress. I knew of a a couple of situations last year where the dept refused to allow the signoff, the school still facilitated the rest but just best to be sure given it's worth 30%

I had a scan at the website, it wouldn't fill me with confidence....the bit about the complicated way it's uploaded sounds like nonsense, it's a portal only registered teacher have access to run by the SEC. Worth having a look at the academy of code site too, they pulled out of offering after this year and have a fairly adament warning to check the principal will sign off on the project......and in that position, given I have no guarantee it's the students work, I wouldn't.

If I were you I'd go looking for guarantees, in writing, from kilmartin, the principal, and the SEC. Like if a student rocked up with a bunch of beautiful oil paintings and a project to sit the art history exam I wouldn't sign off on it if I've never seen the kid paint. I'd really struggle to see that the spirit of the course could be taught this way either, it's very interactive and being able to code is one component but one of many

If the work is coming from outside I think it's the principal who has to sign off, how on earth could they? I. Some schools they'd have never spoken to the child, nevermind knowing what their level of ability is in a subject they are more than likely not familiar with.

Personally I'd be very against this. It would open a door to paying a programmer to do it or a college students ect. There would be no way to ensure its a level playing field and would undermine work being done very honestly in schools.

To put it bluntly, there are also teachers out there who will not check if it is the students work and do not care. So if it is not checked then it creates an advantage to the students who had help v. the students (and teachers) who did everything by the book.

It won't be accepted by the SEC if there is no teacher to sign off on it.

Can the principal sign off instead?

I'm not so sure, there are plenty of unqualified teachers in other subjects signing off on projects.

My point being, it may say that the project must be signed off by a 'qualified teacher'.... But then again, needs of the school, extenuating circumstances might override this.

Going by the example above anyway, there is a principal signing off!

Of course they'd say that.

Just like our minister says that all teachers teaching maths should be qualified. Or every child has access to an SNA.

But of course if your VP is going to tow the line then that's that I suppose.

If there isn't a teacher supervising the project (qualified or not), then it's open season for any student to rock up to school with any project and ask the principal to sign off on it. Students are supposed to be doing this project under teacher supervision. It would be unfair on the students who are sitting in classes under the supervision of a teacher if another student can just circumvent that rule and get a sign off without any supervision.

Unqualified and unregistered are two different things. There is no recourse if an unregistered teacher is not following the guidelines or has lied ....there is for a registered teacher. The guidelines are a registered teacher not a qualified one strictly, essentially their teacher signs the P2 form.

The outside groups are also working for profit making it all the more appealing to sign off on anything. The main issue with signing off on the comsci is the coursework brief and instructions are very clear......it must be done in school in front of the teacher, the structure of the projects make this very sensible. I could knock one out for someone in a few hours and get full marks, but so could anyone with a decent working knowledge.

But yeah, we have more unqualified maths teachers than qualified in the country, mostly teaching JC and the majority will be science/business teachers with maths in their degree. Most of the people doing the Com Sci professional development had been teaching coding in the school anyway, either JC or TY, and would have had some exposure in college. I don't know any schools offering it where the teachers are not engaged with the PDST and aren't attending several traing days a term. It'll be hard to ever get enough comsci teachers any other way unfortunately.