A Qualitative Framework for Introducing Programming Language at High School

Programming is rapidly becoming an integral part of the basic knowledge that should be possessed by the students of all disciplines, in general, and of engineering and sciences, in particular. This is evident from the fact that the programming courses were included as a part of bachelor’s degree curriculum and soon after, an introductory course of programming has been introduced at high school level (grade X and XI). In this paper, we highlight the point that in the near future programming should be considered among the fundamental courses in the curriculum of schools from grade VI. This course should be aligned with the basic principles of mathematics, which have already been learned by the students. As our main contribution, we present a qualitative framework for designing such programming language at school level. We also discuss the possibility as to how an existing programming language should be customized for the better learning of the high school students. In this regard, we have outlined the major requirements including language’s theoretical design and implementation, tools related to the language, curriculum design and assessment.