Teachers 'are not confident of their ability to teach coding'

British teachers lack confidence over whether they have the right skills and tools to provide their students with effective lessons in coding.

This is according to a new survey from the IT consultancy BJSS, which commissioned a YouGov survey of 500 teachers in the state and independent sector to determine how they felt about the current state of computer programming education in the UK, reports TES.

Although coding was added to the national curriculum in 2014 and is expected to be taught to children from the age of five, 67 per cent of teachers polled said they feel they cannot effectively teach coding to students aged between eight and 15 due to a shortfall in skills and tools, while 39 per cent said they do not have access to adequate IT and software.

Moreover, 83 per cent of teachers said they believe it is important for the Department for Education to provide better training to help address these issues.

Glynn Robinson, managing director of BJSS, said: "To safeguard the UK's digital competitiveness, it is crucial that primary and secondary school teachers are properly equipped and resourced to teach the digital and coding skills that will be required by the time today's schoolchildren enter the workforce."

Responding to this report, a spokesperson for the Department for Education said efforts are ongoing to ensure that coding is recognised as an important element of the computing curriculum, with £5 million pledged to the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science programme run by Computing at School since 2012.

An additional £1 million had been given to Computing at School to create free online resources for primary school teachers, which can help to fill in any gaps in their specialist computer science subject knowledge required to teach the new curriculum.