What high-level procedural language should candidates use?

For O Level Computer Science exams sat before 2026 centres are free to use any high-level procedural language of their choice, the ones mentioned in the syllabuses are just the most popular choices. The choice is normally down to the experience of the candidate or teacher’s experience in teaching the language to candidates. We would recommend that candidates learn a full high-level procedural language such as Python or Visual Basic, so that they have good foundations for their future coding and are able to understand programming code questions within Paper 2.

From 2026 onwards candidates must use one of the following programming languages: Python, Visual Basic or Java to answer programming code questions within Paper 2. Solutions written in other programming languages will not be awarded marks. This is outlined in the ‘Changes to this syllabus for 2026, 2027 and 2028’ section at the back of the 2026 – 2028 syllabus.