The ITiCSE 2001 Working Group on Assessment of Programming Skills of First-year CS Students conducted a multi-institutional study to evaluate the programming skills of first-year computer science students. The study aimed to develop a framework for learning objectives and assess the effectiveness of various assessment methods. The group developed a set of programming exercises and used two main assessment instruments: take-home assignments and charettes (short, lab-based assignments). The results showed that the average score on the General Evaluation (GE) criteria was 22.89 out of 110, indicating that many students did not meet the expected programming skills. The Degree of Closeness (DoC) scores, which rated the closeness of a student's program to a working solution, averaged 2.3 out of 5. The study found that students struggled with abstracting problems, generating sub-problems, and transforming them into sub-solutions. The qualitative analysis revealed that students often attributed their difficulties to external factors, such as time constraints and unfamiliarity with the environment, rather than internal factors like lack of understanding. The study suggests that first-year courses need to focus more on problem-solving processes and provide better feedback to help students identify and overcome their limitations. Future studies should address issues related to administration, exercise design, and multi-institutional collaboration to improve the assessment of programming skills.The ITiCSE 2001 Working Group on Assessment of Programming Skills of First-year CS Students conducted a multi-institutional study to evaluate the programming skills of first-year computer science students. The study aimed to develop a framework for learning objectives and assess the effectiveness of various assessment methods. The group developed a set of programming exercises and used two main assessment instruments: take-home assignments and charettes (short, lab-based assignments). The results showed that the average score on the General Evaluation (GE) criteria was 22.89 out of 110, indicating that many students did not meet the expected programming skills. The Degree of Closeness (DoC) scores, which rated the closeness of a student's program to a working solution, averaged 2.3 out of 5. The study found that students struggled with abstracting problems, generating sub-problems, and transforming them into sub-solutions. The qualitative analysis revealed that students often attributed their difficulties to external factors, such as time constraints and unfamiliarity with the environment, rather than internal factors like lack of understanding. The study suggests that first-year courses need to focus more on problem-solving processes and provide better feedback to help students identify and overcome their limitations. Future studies should address issues related to administration, exercise design, and multi-institutional collaboration to improve the assessment of programming skills.