Year 13
Year 13 is the year that the students get to flex your code cutting skills working on their non-exam assessment. The NEA is a personal programming project where our students can choose to create a solution to any problem that they like, be it a game, a simulation, a database… anything. We have even had a functioning NFT generator prototype! Much of Year 13 is dedicated to this project so it has been given its own table below and this is why the Year 13’s theory content appears lighter than Year 12’s.
| Theory | Topic(s) | Key content to be learned | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Autumn Term |
Exchanging Data |
The students start the year studying relational databases and the process of normalising a set of data to 3rd normal form. They also learn how to use SQL to interpret and modify data, how transactions are processed and how ACID, record locking and redundancy is used to minimise transaction errors |
End of unit exam style assessment |
|
Spring Term
|
Types of programming language
Data types, data structures and algorithms |
Students will learn the need for and the characteristics of a variety of programming paradigms including procedural languages, object-oriented languages and assembly languages. The students will also learn how to write simple programs in assembly, using the Little Man Computer instruction set Students will learn about data types, data structures e.g. arrays, stacks and queues, link lists |
End of unit exam style assessment |
|
Summer Term
|
Legal, moral, cultural and ethical issues |
Students will explore computing related legislation, moral and ethical issues |
End of unit exam style assessment |
| NEA | Topic(s) | Key content to be learned | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Autumn Term |
Analysis of the problem
Solution design |
The students will learn about problem identification, about understanding how to interpret and incorporate their stakeholder’s requirements into their solution’s proposal. Students will also learn how to research solutions to similar problems in order to aid their solution’s design.
The students will then design a solution using computational thinking approaches including writing algorithms and flowcharts to represent the various parts of their program. In addition to this the students will learn about different testing methodologies and apply the best fit to create a test plan for their program |
None Exam Assessment – programming project |
|
Spring Term |
Developing the solution |
Students will use programming language(s) of their choice to develop and test their solution against the design requirements. The students will accomplish this using the agile iterative approach to product development. |
None Exam Assessment – programming project |
|
Summer Term |
Evaluation and testing |
Finally, the students will apply the final testing against their product’s success criteria in order to inform their evaluation of the solution Furthermore, students will explore and discuss maintainability of the solution and potential for further developments. |
None Exam Assessment – programming project |
