A report from Nesta the innovation charity and the Science Museum, a charity org, is hoping to progress computer literacy in the British education system and learn from the policy mistakes of the past.

The Legacy of the BBC Micro, documents how the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project of the 1980s, which created the much celebrated BBC Micro computer, helped kickstart a UK programming revolution and heralded a significant growth in the British home computing industry...

The BBC Micro was a series of innovative microcomputers built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project designed with an emphasis on education.

At the time Britain was leading the way in the microcomputer revolution via Sinclair products and others; and the computer industry boom was largely driven through education in schools and the home, encouraging children to understand how computers worked not just seeing them as tools or toys.

Widely used in UK schools the success of the machines was seen in the UK and adopted throughout the world, the BBC Micro machines unleashing a fascination and curiosity in computing which released a new generation of computer programmers and contributed to a flourishing computer science industry in the 1980s...

The Science Museum surveyed nearly 400 current creative technologists to find out their experiences of 1980s computing, including the Computer Literacy Project.

The report assessed the impact it had on their future careers.

86.6 per cent had used a BBC Micro, with almost all using it to write programs with.

Significantly, 41.9 per cent had been involved in setting up their own companies, showing how the project fostered self-sufficiency, innovation as well as boosting the British economy...

Subsequently computer programming in schools was abandoned by the last government in favour of ICT skills which critics have said were only useful in encouraging drudge workers and presented computers as products for consumers...

Rather than for the innovation leaders fuelled by curiosity and the enjoyment of exploring programming that the previous programming curriculum had produced.

Much in the same way language learning was taken off the compulsory schools curriculum in the UK by the same administration, a statement of such mindboggling insularness, arrogance and mediocrity it can hardly be believed...

The call by Nesta to reignite programming in schools, offers echoes of a lecture given by Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, who last year lambasted previous policy decisions in the British education system.

Schmidt identified a problem of pigeon holing arts and science as somehow incompatible, calling on a need for broader learning and described the UK "throwing away your great computer heritage" by failing to teach programming in schools...

The UK invented TV, the telephone, radio, the first programmable computer, but policy decisions in the Blair/Brown era somehow contrived to ensure computer programming was not necessary anymore for school children.

Schmidt said: "I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in UK schools...

"Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software but gives no insight into how it's made..."

The ICT curriculum in the country that invented the computer and launched the micro computer revolution was focusing then on learning how to use Word... rather than inspiring designers and developers of the future to build their own products and programs...

A General Teaching Council study revealed in 2010 just three of the 28,000 newly qualified teachers held a computer-related degree.

In its recommendations for a 21st Century Computer Literacy Project, the Nesta Science museum report suggests we need a strong vision for computer literacy and leadership to coordinate activities.

Also a desire to: "create change in the home as well as schools, to listen to the needs of teachers and learners, technical solutions that aim to be interoperable, supporting resources developed for independent learners, and an active ambition to create economic benefits..."

In a nutshell what we had before that was abandoned in favour of something unchallenging for the students and easy to administer...

Tilly Blyth, author of the report, says: "The original Computer Literacy Project closed the gap between computers and people, bootstrapping our knowledge economy.

"Without a new Computer Literacy Project we risk losing a generation of creative programmers, potential entrepreneurs and citizens skilled up for the digital age."

The current government tends to agree with the need for change and plans are being developed for IT programming courses to be re-booted...

In a year in which there are anniversary celebrations of the birth of Alan Turing, the great British computer pioneer, and a member of the WW2 code-breaking fraternity at Bletchley Park, it's additionally fitting that the mistakes of the past have been learned and progress and innovation is being prioritised...