Why is Computer Science treated as a special case?
Having had one daughter sit CS last year and have her project binned having wasted 20 hours on it. And another who will go through the same next year, I don't understand why CS is being treated as a special case.
All of the DT subjects (resistant materials, product design, textiles etc.) have a controlled assessment element which makes up typically 50% of the final GCSE. Unless they have tightened up the process, students typically work on these at school and home, take as many hours as they need, and can use any resource (including online) provided they don't directly plagiarise, and they list what sources they have used.
Kids frequently discuss their projects with other kids both IRL and online forums.
Seeing as so little of the CS NEA mark was the actual code, if kids didn't understand it fully, could discuss their design choices, testing methodology and results, and document what changes / improvements they made, they would have got only a small percentage of the available marks!
It annoys me that due to some puritanical witch hunt another daughter will miss out on 10 weeks of CS lessons to work on something that is of no use to her skills, or the final GCSE!