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Computer Science A Level
Overview
A Level pathways are designed to prepare you for higher education and beyond.
This course will enable learners to develop a broad range of skills in the areas of programming, system development, computer architecture, data, communication and applications.
In 2018 100% of Computer Science students passed this course.
Course description
You will be expected to take this subject alongside another two A Levels. Computer Science goes well with subjects such as maths, physics and business. You will also be expected to complete a work placement as part of your programme of study. Study skills and employability skills will be developed with the help of your personal tutor.
Due to the current COVID-19 situation and with health and safety of our students as a priority, we have redesigned this course to include a mixture of classroom-based and online learning.
What areas will I study?
Year 1 AS Specification:
Key Areas AS Specification (Year 1)
- Programming – imperative procedural-oriented, OOP, recursive techniques
- Data structures – arrays, lists, dictionaries, hash tables, queue, graph, tree, stack, vector, fields, records, files (text & binary).
- Systematic approach to problem solving – skills needed for Paper 1 and NEA (Year 2 Project)
- Theory of computation – abstraction, automation, FSM with and without output, language hierarchy, complexity, Turing machines
- Data representation – number systems/bases, information coding systems, encryption
- Computer systems – logic gates, Boolean algebra, program translator types, classification of programming languages, system software
- Computer organisation and architecture – machine code/assembly language, CPU, internal components of computer, external hardware devices (limited range)
- Consequences of uses of computing – software and their algorithms embed moral & cultural values, issue of scale brings potential for great good but also ability to cause great harm, challenges facing legislators
- Communication and networking – communication methods/basics, network topology, wireless, the Internet, TCP/IP, CRUD applications and REST, JSON, JavaScript
Year 2 A Level Specification:
- Programming – imperative procedural-oriented, OOP, recursive techniques
- Data structures – arrays, lists, dictionaries, hash tables, queue, graph, tree, stack, vector, fields, records, files (text & binary)
- Algorithms – traversal, search, sort, optimisation
- Theory of computation – abstraction, automation, FSM with and without output, language hierarchy, complexity, Turing machines
- Data representation – number systems/bases, information coding systems, encryption
- Computer systems – logic gates, Boolean algebra, program translator types, classification of programming languages, system software
- Computer organisation and architecture – machine code/assembly language, CPU, internal components of computer, external hardware devices (limited range)
- Consequences of uses of computing – software and their algorithms embed moral & cultural values, issue of scale brings potential for great good but also ability to cause great harm, challenges facing legislators
- Communication and networking – communication methods/basics, network topology, wireless, the Internet, TCP/IP, CRUD applications and REST, JSON, JavaScript
- Databases – data modelling, relational database, SQL, client server databases
- Big Data – volume/velocity/variety, fact-based model, distributed processing and functional programming
- Fundamentals of functional programming – function type, first-class object, function application, partial function application, composition of functions, map, filter, reduce, lists
- Systematic approach to problem solving – skills needed for Paper 1 and NEA
- NEA - The computing practical project
Key Areas A Level Specification (Year 2)
- Programming – imperative procedural-oriented, OOP, recursive techniques
- Data structures – arrays, lists, dictionaries, hash tables, queue, graph, tree, stack, vector, fields, records, files (text & binary).
- Algorithms – traversal, search, sort, optimisation
- Theory of computation – abstraction, automation, FSM with and without output, language hierarchy, complexity, Turing machines
- Data representation – number systems/bases, information coding systems, encryption
- Computer systems – logic gates, Boolean algebra, program translator types, classification of programming languages, system software
- Computer organisation and architecture – machine code/assembly language, CPU, internal components of computer, external hardware devices (limited range)
- Consequences of uses of computing – software and their algorithms embed moral & cultural values, issue of scale brings potential for great good but also ability to cause great harm, challenges facing legislators
- Communication and networking – communication methods/basics, network topology, wireless, the Internet, TCP/IP, CRUD applications and REST, JSON, JavaScript
- Databases – data modelling, relational database, SQL, client server databases
- Big Data – volume/velocity/variety, fact-based model, distributed processing and functional programming
- Fundamentals of functional programming – function type, first-class object, function application, partial function application, composition of functions, map, filter, reduce, lists
- Systematic approach to problem solving – skills needed for Paper 1 and NEA
- NEA - The computing practical project