A Level Computer Science
What is it all about?
A level Computer Science builds upon the knowledge and skills developed at GCSE by going into greater depth, particularly with the workings of the CPU, operating systems, web technologies and programming. We have had many successful students who have studied this without taking GCSE computer science, but it would be a steep learning curve.
What do we study?
The course is split into two units at AS (year 12) and three in year 13 for the full A level:
1. Computer systems: What we learn about includes the workings of the CPU, how software is created and the different types of software, how data is stored and represented in computers, how data is transferred between computers and the impacts of technology.
2. Algorithms and programming: This is all about understanding computational thinking and programming. We do quite a bit of programming using C# to develop experience coding.
3. Programming project: In year 13, students have the opportunity to develop a piece of software of their choice for an end user. They will use an Agile methodology to design, implement and test the program. This is a substantial bit of work but allows students to massively develop their programming ability.
Why would it be useful?
Students have expressed how the problem solving they have developed in computer science has complimented work in other subjects. Even if not actively pursuing a career in the industry, knowledge of how computers operate can only help in the modern world. Every year we have students go on to study computer related subjects at university, degree apprenticeships or straight into employment. The range of careers in the computing industry is massive. There are industries within industries! You have software development, hardware development, database management, web development, cyber security, network management, and many more.
We follow the OCR specification
Taking A Level Computer Science
A Level CS: Algorithm Assembly Instructions
See also...
Week beginning 12 Feb 2024: 'Life Lessons'
50 Things to Learn for Creative iMedia
Explore...
Bronze DofE First Aid Training and Camp Skills Day Letter
Candidate Information - Non-examination assessments
RSHE (Relationships, Sex and Health Education)
New...
Do the Right Thing Scene Analysis
Teacher of Health & Social Care
Discover...
ICT Computer Science A Level CS Student Information A Levels A Level Learning C# Recipes Private Candidate Food Year 9Chem GCSE Options Spanish Avatar Art Science Cooking Rules Careersfair News and Articles Trips School Nurse
Uh-oh - we were unable to load our website on your browser so we're showing you a plain HTML version.
We use many features found in modern browsers and regrettably yours seems incompatible.
However this legacy version contains (very, very nearly) all the same content. Each page is rendered on our server and doesn't rely on any browser features except the odd font. It doesn't even need Javascript or fancy CSS. It's like being in 1995!
Your browser is reporting itself to us as Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com). Please consider updating your browser to make the most of our website.
If you would like to try our proper website again - you can do so here...