This article is partly an advertisement for my latest ebook and my newsletter. Still worth reading though methinks, for a chuckle.

Click the pic to be taken to the book on Payhip.

This is an extract from the forthcoming issue of my newsletter, Digital Education, which will be out in the next day or two.

Here in England the Government, in its quest to put Computing on the map, did its best to make sure the rest of the map was blank – by getting rid of qualifications that lots of students took (especially girls). I do try to avoid politics in my articles, so I will simply say this. As politicians always seem to fall foul of unintended consequences, I find myself in agreement with Crispin Sartwell. In History, totally destroyed, he writes:

"We must now reckon with this fact: Human history is the bumbling-about of self-deluded and incompetent doinks. Surely you are not going to deny that. It is nothing so much as a series of pratfalls by inept leaders and the suckers who follow them toward doom. Their incompetence is a historical force in the lives of each and all of us."

Fortunately for you, I am doing my bit to counteract their ineptitude, in the form of my latest ebook. It's a guide to the Computing and Computing-related qualifications available to state schools in England. It's not quite in the same league as Tolstoy or D.H. Lawrence, but it's a heck of a lot more useful, because it will save you hours of trawling the web. (Even if you have no need for such a guide, as it's full of tables you will find it a great cure for insomnia.)

You can sign up to the newsletter here: Digital Education. In the meantime, if the aforementioned ebook interests you you can purchase it for the princely sum of £0.99 or whatever that translates to in your own currency, Not that if you live in the EU VAT will be added at the rate prevailing in your country, although that doesn’t apply in England.

Here’s the link: Computing and related qualifications.