The UK's teaching of IT in schools has long been under attack for being insufficient for motivating children to take computer science degree at university, and enter the IT profession.

Most recently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that he was "flabbergasted" that computer science was not taught as standard in UK schools.

"Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computing heritage," he said at the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last month.

An also said that the current IT curriculum was failing students by not making a clear distinction between use of IT and IT as a career. Moreover, a Royal Society report last year found that school , and that fewer children were taking IT at GCSE and A-Level. This trend appears to be continuing, as this year's A-Level results showed an eighth consecutive year of decline in the number of students taking computing.

Science minister David Willetts announced the new industry-funded trial "Behind the Screen", led by sector skills council e-skills UK, at the British Festival of Science at the University of Bradford.