The variety of women selecting to take computing at GCSE stage is rising steadily, with 2024 seeing the third consecutive yr of development.
This yr, 21,020 feminine college students throughout the UK took the GCSE computing examination, an increase from 19,061 in 2023. Nevertheless, with 74,821 male college students additionally sitting the examination, women are nonetheless closely outnumbered.
Mairead O’Connor, apply operations director at Node4, mentioned: “It’s nice to see that extra women are learning computing and engineering at GCSE than final yr, marking a optimistic upward development over the previous three years.
“However regardless of this year-on-year development, the pool of feminine college students stays small. The stereotype of computing and engineering being boys’ golf equipment stays, which may be off-putting to women. It’s arduous to be the one feminine within the room in grownup life, not to mention in your bashful teenage years.”
As highlighted by O’Connor, there are a lot of causes women don’t select computing topics or careers, together with a lack of information about what computing careers contain and the way learning it as a topic could possibly be useful to their future, in addition to an absence of seen and accessible position fashions already in computing demonstrating the assorted paths into the business.
However O’Connor additionally acknowledged some college students aren’t in a position to decide on computing as a result of tight budgets have left many colleges unable to supply the topic, particularly these in areas with a much less privileged socioeconomic background.
Within the colleges providing GCSE computing, there was an increase in general college students learning the topic this yr, from 90,558 in 2023 to 95,841 in 2024.
Efficiency was additionally larger this yr than final, with 28.3% of scholars within the UK taking the GCSE computing examination attaining at the very least an A/7 grade, in contrast with round 1 / 4 of scholars final yr.
Although women are in restricted quantity, their grades are larger general than their male counterparts – in 2024, 35% of women achieved at the very least an A/7 grade, in contrast with 26.4% of boys, and 75.5% of women achieved at the very least a C/4 grade in contrast with 66.3% of boys.
It’s troublesome to check the previous 5 years of computing grades, because of the pandemic inflicting anomalies in the way in which grades had been allotted. With youngsters not having the ability to attend exams throughout lockdowns, grades had been supplied utilizing a mix of information from mock examination outcomes, coursework grades, instructor predictions, centre evaluation grades and statistical standardisation fashions, however regardless of the trouble to provide a real reflection of scholar efficiency, grades in 2020 and 2021 turned out a lot larger than in earlier years.
Rachel Phillips, UK and Eire vice-president at Okta, supplied a well timed reminder to these getting their outcomes at the moment that the themes you are taking at GCSE, and the grades you’re awarded, don’t essentially dictate your attainable future profession.
“This yr, my son might be receiving his outcomes. With a lot stress on at the moment’s youth, I might be reminding him that his and his friends’ profession paths can take many types and don’t essentially require a stream of accreditations. For instance, I took an entry course after A-levels to check engineering, and imagine this was among the finest selections I made.”
Ladies don’t at all times keep on learning science, know-how, engineering and maths (STEM) topics, although the variety of women taking computing at A-level within the UK this yr additionally rose, hopefully portray a optimistic image for gender equality in tech sooner or later.
