Informatics Reference Framework for School

The contribution that informatics has made since the last century has fuelled innovative and signifi-cant technological advances and vice versa. It makes fundamental contributions to current economic, educational, industrial and social development. Informatics importantly has the capacity to support and augment human reasoning and potential. Education systems have a responsibility to recognise this and to ensure that young people are equipped to be able to drive forward, judge innovation and take part in the development of a just and fair society. To properly embrace this development by society in general, informatics has to be seen as an essential aspect of the education of all pupils. The present report, which outlines an informatics reference framework for all young people, bears that in mind. It is intended to offer high-level guidance that may be used by, and indeed stimulate, curriculum designers to review their focus and approach to the subject of informatics. Following the introductory sections, the heart of the reference framework is described in section 4. A set of aims and objectives for informatics educa-tion for all young people is provided in section 4.2 followed by a set of core concepts and an accompa-nying brief description of these in Table 1 of section 4.3; this conveys a robust structure and a general architecture, which captures an essential view of informatics as a discipline in general education. To complement the general architecture, a contem-porary and outward facing view of informatics is offered in section 4.4; this includes discussion of modern developments that relate to topics such as data science and artificial intelligence, as well as at-tention to related ethical concerns. Annex A.1 presents a brief description of infor-matics as a discipline. Annex A.2 presents a limited number of examples of how high-level learning out-comes could be described in a concrete curriculum at three levels that reflect indicators of outcomes after primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education.