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=Why Choose Computing?= This specification has been designed for students who wish to go on to higher education courses or employment where a knowledge of Computing would be beneficial. They can study Computing and go on to a career in Medicine, Law, Business, Politics or any type of Science. There is a clear distinction between this specification and the GCSE ICT and GCE Applied ICT specifications.

This course is not about learning to use tools or just training in a programming language. Instead the emphasis is on computational thinking. Computational thinking is a kind of reasoning used by both humans and machines. Thinking computationally is an important life skill. Thinking computationally means using abstraction and decomposition. The study of computation is about what can be computed and how to compute it.

Computing / Computer Science is about designing new algorithms to solve new problems. In this sense Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Many great challenges lie in the future for Computer Scientists to solve.

This course, with its emphasis on abstract thinking, general problem-solving, algorithmic and mathematical reasoning, scientific and engineering-based thinking, is a good foundation for understanding these future challenges.