Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, has supplied me with a couple of good quotes over the years and I was interested to hear that he is "flabbergasted" that computer science is not taught as standard in Britain's schools. It's not a word I associate with American executives!

If the BBC is to be believed, and it is usually only nuance it gets wrong, there is much to agree with in his recent speech to the Edinburgh International Television Festival. We have an amazing heritage of life changing inventions only to lose the initiative of their development. Football is much the same!

He mentions the BBC computer initiative of the 1980s and while I doubt the revival of BBC BASIC was at the heart of his comments I'd like to put in a plug for a language that embodies much that is good in programming in terms of efficiencies and is also algebraic and saw great benefits for mathematics learning 20 years ago.

I'd take issue with one thing though. It is not that the National Curriculum is just about using software rather than how it is made, it is rather that 'making things happen' is neglected. This has more to do with the confidence of those who have to deliver it than an intention to ignore it.

Using software is important but I don't mean which buttons to press. We have not yet reached the point where it is intuitively used to support learning.

In the end there are opportunities to program but they need to be grasped. If there is an argument to be had about its place in schools it is not about whether it is present in the current National Curriculum but about its extent.