Some countries are cottoning on to the problem sooner than others. Estonia was the first country in the world to mandate that computer programming should be part of the curriculum for public primary schools. Children in Vietnam learn computer science from first grade, and half of them could pass an interview at Google by the time they’re sixteen. And the UK is introducing a new curriculum next September that will see children as young as five being taught programming.

In Australia, proposed modifications to the K-12 curriculum are being considered, and Google Australia is lobbying hard for them to be accepted. But with a daughter already in the school system, I’m very aware that our primary school CS education stops with learning to use Word and PowerPoint, and that although times tables may be taught by playing “educational games” on computers, these are no more than high-tech equivalents of flash cards. It would be so much more valuable to learn how to write programs to display the times tables, and, from there, to explore numbers more deeply.

I’m determined to bridge the gap by getting hands-on with my daughter’s CS education myself. She’s already experienced the joy of poring over C=64 programming books and learning how to make things happen on screen by writing code, this time using an emulator on our iMac. And there’s so much more for her to discover if I can kindle the spark of enthusiasm.

So, what can be done? The short-term answer is, I think, for parents working in the IT industry to volunteer their time at schools, helping to give all children the opportunity to become fascinated with how computers work. And there needs to be an outlet for those of them who do get hooked; either in the form of technology they can use at home (let’s replace those lame LeapPad toy computers with the real thing), or in the form of extracurricular activities, such as after-school code clubs. I’m committed to making a real change to the education of all children at my daughter’s school. I’ll let you know how I get on.