Category Archives: Careers

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Gatsby Benchmarks for careers – CS4FN / Teaching London Computing / TechDevJobs

Gatsby Benchmarks logo

One of our aims is to help in giving school students, teachers, parents and careers advisors a better idea of career choices. CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)* and Teaching London Computing help schools in fulfilling three of the Gatsby Foundation’s careers benchmarks:

Benchmark 2. Learning from career and labour market information

Our allied site TechDevJobs forms a repository of browsable / searchable job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications for tech and computing-adjacent careers organised by theme. These showcase a range of employers, sectors, job types, salaries and application methods. Teachers and careers advisors can use the collected examples in class (without having to wait for a particular job to be advertised).

Benchmark 4. Linking curriculum learning to careers

Many of our CS4FN articles about computer scientists also talk about their careers and job titles. We have also gathered computing careers-focused articles into a number of portals (easily findable within our main portal page

Benchmark 7. Encounters with further and higher education

Paul Curzon and others on the CS4FN team have talked to (literally) thousands of children & teenagers in schools, at events, on QMUL campus as well as through online events, as part of dedicated events, and as a university lecturer visiting schools.

We have a now long-standing partnership with the Royal Institution running Masterclass series (in partnership with the Computer Science department at Queen Mary University of London) and Paul Curzon gives holiday workshops and individual masterclasses in both Maths and Computing.

Jo Brodie is a regular contributor to the free online “I’m A Computer Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here” live text-based chats about computing as a subject and computing careers. Primary or secondary teachers sign their class up to type questions to five or six computer scientists who answer them as fast as they can (no audio, no video but lots of fast-paced chat fun).

Further reading

Gatsby Benchmarks: What’s Changed for Schools and Colleges in 2025 (4 August 2025) Becci Peters blog post for CAS (Computing at School).

*CS4FN = Computer Science For Fun, a project co-founded by Peter McOwan and Paul Curzon in 2005 to inspire school pupils about computing as a topic through fun magazine articles and magic shows. The sister project, Teaching London Computing, was launched 10 years later and funded by the Mayor of London and the Department for Education to support, through face-to-face CPD and classroom activities, educators in London who were teaching the (then) new computing curricula. Since then we have expanded our offering to include ‘A Bit of CS4FN’ for younger readers, in part after noticing a missed opportunity for content aimed at younger siblings at our science festival stalls. Alongside this we have also developed the TechDevJobs site to showcase different computer science and computing-allied roles.

Peter McOwan died in 2019.

Subscribe to be notified whenever we publish a new post to the Teaching London Computing blog.

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FREE, funded digital / computing / cyber security / big data skills training for Londoners

There are free online, self-paced digital (and other) courses available for those who live or work in London, part-funded by the European Commission. Applicants need to be in work (including self-employed) or on the Kickstarter scheme.

The pre-recorded courses are taught by lecturers from London South Bank University and Ravensbourne University in Greenwich, who’ve partnered with Dagile to offer the courses online. A snapshot of the courses available is tomorrow and full details are in the FAQ.

A list of the available courses (see plain text version at the end of the post).

Lists of other courses
The Skills Toolkit https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/find-a-course/the-skills-toolkit

Skills Bootcamps https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/find-a-skills-bootcamp/list-of-skills-bootcamps

 

Plain text version of the courses listed in the image

1. Basic Skills – units
• Maths – making calculations
• ESOL speaking and listening

2. Creative Digital – units
• Creating and publishing web pages
• Creating and manipulating digital images
• User interface and User Experience design
• Introduction to web design and development

3a. Digital & IT Skills – course
• Big Data & Cyber Security

3b. Digital & IT Skills – units
• Big Data
• Database with SQL
• Programming methods
• Programming fundamentals
• Introduction to Cyber Security

4a. Digital Marketing – course
• Digital marketing

4b. Digital Marketing – units
• The marketing environment
• Introduction to marketing
• Developing a marketing plan
• Principles of social media advertising

5. Leadership & Management – units
• Business planning
• Management & Leadership