ICL-CES 1969-1983

Updated 4th April 2026: News/Updates

The Computer Education Group of the British Computer Society met for the first time on December 20th 1965. Their aim was to connect the schools and colleges that were already doing things with computers and to further spread the use of computers in education.

The Hoskyns Group, a UK IT and professional services company, undertook a project that they called 'CES': Computing Education in Schools.

International Computers Limited (ICL) itself was formed when International Computers and Tabulators (ICT), English Electric Computers (EEC) and Elliott Automation merged in 1968.

Hoskyns worked on CES until 1969, when the project was taken over by International Computers Limited (ICL), and ICL-CES was born.

The first ICL-CES newsletter of October 1969 (original copy in the University of Manchester ICL archive) reports on the takeover.

The ICL-CES Press Conference 1969, typewritten account — ICL-CES Press Conference, September 1969. Source: ICL Archive, University of Manchester Library.

The first CES materials (16+) were developed by Hoskyns, and were used for teaching during the school year 1968–69.

One of ICL-CES's early books, Fundamentals of Computing (what would later be known under ICL-CES as part of their 16+ program) is actually marked on each page © Hoskyns Group Ltd 1969. See the Other Books page for details of that book.

The CES project remained part of ICL from 15th September 1969 until October 1983, when it was sold for under £100k to Acorn and renamed Acorn CES (Computing Educational Services). You can read thoughts about the end of ICL-CES here.

ICL-CES provided student textbooks, teacher resources, newsletters, organised meetings and more. Naturally, throughout all of this there was a link to ICL's computer hardware that was popular across the country and worldwide.

ICL in Education brochure showing students using computers, c.1969 — ICL-CES promotional material, c.1969. Source: ICL Archive, University of Manchester Library.

This site serves to inform and document my research around CES, early computing education, the resources that were produced and how computing education changed over the life of the project.

One of your first points of call for information about ICL-CES should be the https://iclces.uk/ website. The author was a student using the ICL-CES resources and there is a fantastic amount of information, ephemera and more.

This site doesn't aim to mimic or duplicate — it aims to provide additional information, detail and insight that hopefully complements the aforementioned site.

If you have any ephemera related to the CES project (newsletters, teacher packs, course leader bulletins etc), please get in touch via the email link below or via LinkedIn.

Attempts to identify and/or contact current copyright holders for assets reproduced on this site were unsuccessful. I believe my use of these assets falls under fair dealing as defined by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, for non-commercial research, educational, and documentary/editorial purposes. However, if any copyright holder has concerns about the reproduction of their material here, I will be happy to remove the assets or modify their presentation at their request.