Honestly, school time is not that scarce. An adult can learn to read and write in a couple of days of intensive practice. Maths can take longer, but have the same issues as programming - how many cruise directors use more than arithmetic?
Learning programming can be easily misconstrued. Lets call it logic, algorithms and applied maths. Now is it a good idea? Sure, and its something a hypothetical cruise director could actually use.
Okay, so, funny story: one of my programmer buddies worked for a cruise line. He's an almost-autistic free-radical type of programmer. After fixing up their website, he wrote a new application for the onboard ship customer management system. (The current one is atrocious and a decade old.)
But the project never got the green light and was killed.
If a cruise director had some experience in programming, and realized that the system could be better, then the project could have been pushed for more! Maybe it would actually be on the 30-ish ships in their fleet!
For students, no, for teachers, yes. And for the budgets? Picture yourself as a financer at a school, you have to fund more teachers, introduce a new subject and overall you're getting less money per student.
Hm. Logic, algorithms can be taught by existing teachers. The subject isn't entirely new, and especially in a primary-school context could be taught by any number of subject-teachers.
As for budget the letter was trying to address that, and got ignored - the cheap computer project. Part of the issue I think.
Learning programming can be easily misconstrued. Lets call it logic, algorithms and applied maths. Now is it a good idea? Sure, and its something a hypothetical cruise director could actually use.