Is a Coding Ability Gap in my Class Common?

Slightly odd, but for those taking/have taken GCSE Computer Science, have you noticed a wide ability gap in the Coding/Programming section?

I've been fortunate to start coding from a young age, but many in my class are still struggling on selection, let alone iteration fundamentals!

Since Exams are quite literally around the corner of the week for some, I was wondering if this is common? It appears most of our class is getting some undesirable marks for Paper 2 (OCR J277), simply because they don't know what they're doing in either Python or Pseudocode.

I know COVID might have been an affecting factor, but I think Lockdown actually furthered my ability the most.

TLDR: Does your CS Class have a wide ability gap in it's Coding, or is it centred to my classroom? How well did your Teachers pull you through COVID?

Reply 1

Teruko

My class has a fair bit of variation. Some of us just really like programming and do it for fun (and/or profit) even outside of school, and others are just good at it (being good at maths is often helpful).
On the other side of the spectrum there's people who don't really enjoy programming or computer science and only actually want a grade. These people will typically only do programming tasks set in class or for homework to the bare minimum standard, and often don't even try to get the program to work before giving up and submitting unfinished code.
And in the middle there's people who can do the programming pretty well - they do all the homework, all the classwork, etc. These people can answer the exam questions well enough, but sometimes struggle on the hardest questions

Reply 2

hmaqd

personally my class has a large gap in coding ability some of us were proficient in python as its what we were taught for gcses, but there are also some people who struggled with it, couldve been from not paying attention to not putting enough work in after classes or simply not understanding it.
in terms of covid my teacher acc did manage to pull most of our class throught the fundementals and more complicated sides of python programming.
but i will say your determination and passion for coding will determine how well your ability at it is.