Teachers will play a crucial role in achieving the transformation of the computing curriculum. And while many, not surprisingly, resent the education secretary, Michael Gove, labelling ICT teaching as dull and boring, most agree that sweeping changes need to be made to the way computing is taught in schools.

John Stout, who teaches computing to A-level students at King George V Sixth Form College in Southport, Merseyside, has campaigned for greater emphasis on coding, computational thinking and the theory behind computing for a long time. A member of the Computing at School pressure group, he says: "Many of our students arrive here having had a very unfortunate experience of ICT at secondary school because a lot of it is just teaching them to use Word."

Stout takes his 13-year-old grandson as an example: "At home, in his spare time, he uses a site called Mindcraft, which is an online game. He's creating new systems for it, setting up servers, writing bits of programming for it – stuff far in advance of what he is doing at school. Kids of his age would be fascinated by more challenging material in their lessons. They need to be learning about the theory behind computing. The story of the Turing machine, especially in this year of the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth, would captivate their generation."

Amy Desmond-Williams, director of teaching and learning in ICT and business studies at Sidney Stringer Academy in Coventry, has already begun the process of changing the school's curriculum to include more computer science. She says: "There is only so much Powerpoint and Word that you can teach. It is important for students to learn office skills but in order to give them the opportunity to move on to taking degrees in computer science we need to be teaching them some programming skills early on as well. There has not been enough of that done up to now."

Teacher training is key, she continues: "When I was training only a few years ago there weren't really any courses in computer science for teachers. It tended to be ICT with a strong bias towards office skills. The subject of computing was very much linked to business studies. There is a bit of a panic now in schools. Developing new teacher training courses has to be a priority."

Mark Clarkson, head of IT and Computing at Egglescliffe School in Teesside, agrees. He says: "There was a time when ICT departments in schools were made up of interested PE teachers who compiled their football teams' results on spreadsheets and a couple of maths and physics teachers who knew a bit of coding. Now it's mainly teachers with business studies backgrounds. There needs to be massive retraining to make sure teachers can deliver different content from what they have been used to delivering. We don't so much need more teachers as teachers with different skills. We've developed a whole generation of teachers with a skillset that is not what we need for the longterm future of computing in schools." Lisa O'Kelly