Tom Crick (born 1981) is a British interdisciplinary computer scientist. He is Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Professor of Digital Policy at Swansea University. Alongside his academic work, Crick has led major reforms to the science and technology curriculum in Wales, with related contributions to digital/technology policy in the UK.
Early life and education
Crick was raised and educated in Wheatley, Oxfordshire.[1] He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in computer science at the University of Bath, having been sponsored through his undergraduate degree by ARM.[1] His doctoral research, funded by the EPSRC, considered superoptimisation by developing practical strategies to generate provably optimal code using answer set programming.[2]
Crick has been involved with the reform of the school-level science and technology curriculum in Wales since 2010.[13][14][15][16] In 2013, he was appointed by the Welsh Government to chair an independent review of the ICT curriculum in Wales.[17] Crick argued that Welsh learners were not being given the necessary skills or agency to thrive in our digital world.[18][19]
In 2015-2016, Crick chaired the development of the bilingual Digital Competence Framework[20] in Wales, which elevated digital competence (the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to be confident in the use of technologies[21]) to the same statutory position as literacy and numeracy in the new Curriculum for Wales. It outlined how schools could incorporate student-centred digital competency into their local curriculum.[20]
He then led the development of the Science & Technology strand of the new Curriculum for Wales in 2017.[22] His efforts united the traditional sciences (physics, chemistry and biology) with computer science and design & technology.[23] The new curriculum was published in January 2020 and started phasing in for all schools in Wales from September 2022 onwards.[24] Crick was also appointed Chair of the National Network of Excellence in Science & Technology,[25] a £4m Welsh Government strategic investment which focused on supporting STEM teachers in partnership with higher education institutions.[26]
Crick also chaired Qualification Wales’ 2018 review of ICT sector qualifications, which reported that they were outdated and needed considerable reform,[27] resulting in new GCSE and A-Level qualifications in Digital Technology from 2021 onwards.[28]
