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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

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What is a variable in computing?

What is a variable?
Find out how variables are used in computing and how they are introduced in the KS2 classroom in our parents' guide to variables.

What is a variable in computing?

A variable is something that can be changed.

In computer programming we use variables to store information that might change and can be used later in our program.

For example, in a game a variable could be the current score of the player; we would add 1 to the variable whenever the player gained a point. In a banking system, a variable could be used to store the balance of an account. When the customer makes a withdrawal the amount in this variable will be reduced by the withdrawal amount.

Variables in KS1 computing

Generally variables are considered a fairly advanced concept in computer science so unless your child is writing programs using a visual programming language such as Scratch in KS1 then it is unlikely that they will be taught the principles of variables so early on.

Variables in KS2 computing

In KS2 your child will start using visual programming languages, allowing them to build basic computer programs and games by connecting building blocks together into a program.

Visual programming languages are an excellent way to get started programming as they do not require anywhere near as much debugging as a textual programming language. 

Variables will be introduced in KS2 most likely using a visual programming language called Scratch.

Scratch is an excellent tool to teach programming as it allows your child to use very advanced programming techniques in a very simple and easy-to-use format. In Scratch a variable can be created that stores any information you would like about the game you are building.

In the following example we show what real Scratch blocks look like when building a simple game that allows a player to move right and left, avoiding an enemy. Here's what some of the blocks mean:

Now let’s look at a piece of code that uses Scratch blocks to build our game:

The above code is a fantastic example of how a variable is used in real-life coding and this is the sort of activity your child may be doing in KS2 in order to learn about variables. At any point in the game you can tell how many times the player has died by seeing what the value of deaths is; clicking the green flag resets the game and resets our number of deaths back to 0.

Variables in primary school: what your child learns year-by-year

Please note that the following guidelines for what is taught in each primary year is for guidance only and may not be representative of the way computing is taught at your child’s school.

Year 3
Students will be introduced to the idea of variables with reference to real-world objects such as a glass that could hold orange juice or apple juice.

Year 4
The idea of variables will be applied to a visual programming language and students will learn to store basic information such as a game score in a variable.

Year 5 and Year 6
Variables will be linked to other ideas such as loops and conditions (we can run a command if a variable is equal to something else, or stop running a loop once a variable has reached a certain value).