Experience of Ict Implementation in Primary Curriculum in Ukraine and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Abstract

The study was formulated within the context of an increasing recognition of ICT as curriculum priorities in primary schools of many European countries. The implementation of ICT-centered curriculum is a step towards realizing the goals of the new Law of Ukraine “On Education” (2017), National Strategy for the Development of Education in Ukraine until 2021, European strategic programme “Education and Training 2020”. Actuality of approaches to ICT implementation in present-day primary schools is caused by the substantial development of digital technologies and requirement of digital literacy for people’s work, social, and personal lives. The unique opportunity of primary education as a large sub-sector of any education system is to contribute to the renewal of societies through education of the young. The paper aims to study implementation of Computer science into national standard of primary education in Ukraine and the UK. In the recent years, many European countries have seen some changes of the content one of which relates to the area of computer science education that resulted in implementing an ambitious new curriculum in this subject. The author gives a comparative analysis of primary ICT within national standards in term of the Computer science development from the initial stage to present day situation. The comparative analysis specifies areas of similarities (aims, objectives, approaches to implementation, priorities of developing digital skills, teaching hours) and differences (programme topics, characterization of learning outcomes) in the study of ICT covering the subject content, expected learning results and general principles of ICT in education, as well as examples of ICT implementation.
 The paper is also focused at discussing the role of the ICT curriculum in modern-day primary classroom; advantages and disadvantages of ICT integration at primary stage.
 Much attention is paid to how it is integrated into daily learning modes to allow and encourage active learning. In primary education there are two main models of ICT implementation into curriculum, these are: ICT integrated across the curriculum; ICT (or Informatics, Computer Science and Computing) as a discrete subject within national standard.