Exploring the Impact of School Location on Young People's Likelihood of Studying Computing in Scotland

Uptake of Computing Science (CS) in schools in Scotland is far lower than desired, because of young people both not being able to access the subject and not choosing to study it. Moreover, over the last two decades, uptake across the country has been dropping, and gender balance in uptake is not only poor but worsening. As a first step to gaining insight into how we could work to improve uptake of CS, we have analysed data for secondary schools in Scotland over the last three years, with a focus on publicly-funded schools, to explore where inequalities and context-specific drivers have an impact. In this paper, we discuss how the location of a school in a certain socio-economic area and in an urban/rural/remote location impact the chances of young people studying CS. The data indicates that socio-economic advantage is a positive factor in accessing CS. It also indicates that urban locations tend to be advantageous in this respect, though the data around this is more complicated.