By Natasha Lomas, 17 June 2008 11:30
NEWS
The teaching of IT in secondary schools needs radically overhauling as it is putting kids off a career in technology, leading figures from academia and industry have warned.
The UK's status as a world class IT nation is being threatened by a skills black hole which is getting bigger ever year as fewer and fewer kids choose to study computing.
Companies already have difficulty sourcing skilled IT staff - and government and industry bodies have warned thousands more skilled staff will be needed over the coming years to power the so called 'knowledge economy'. But as numbers of computing students continue to drop off, the question is where is the talent going to come from?
Professor Lachlan MacKinnon, head of the school of computing and creative technologies at the University of Abertay, Dundee, has called for a radical overhauling of the curriculum in secondary schools as "boring" ICT classes which focus on Word and Excel are turning teenagers off IT as a career.
Deep technical skills are required to support the IT industry proper, which is not the same as learning the basic ICT skills that employees in all industries need nowadays, said MacKinnon.
The reality is that the IT industry needs more computing graduates than are currently being produced just to keep up with current demand - yet computer science student numbers have declined by around a quarter in the last three years so the future for UK IT looks very bleak indeed.
"We're going to hell," he warned. "It's not a good place to be."
Karen Price, CEO of tech industry skills body e-skills UK, also called for a radical overhaul of the curriculum in schools, warning: "The current curriculum is having an extremely negative impact on young people's attitudes to IT."
Price pointed out there's been a 50 per cent drop in applications to computer science degrees over the last five years. "Young people are not choosing to study [computer sciences]. We're sitting on a time-bomb, quite frankly," she said.
According to Price, an A-level in computing is only a prerequisite for less than four per cent of the 5,000 IT-related courses on offer, and she said this "says a lot really".
Moreover, despite being vital to drive the UK's knowledge economy, computing is not classed as a Stem subject (science, technology, engineering, maths), said MacKinnon, meaning higher education funding has been significantly cut back - to the tune of £100m in recent years.
Nor is IT eligible for SIV status (aka a strategically important and vulnerable subject) and the government support that would bring.
MacKinnon warned: "Without significant intervention higher education cannot meet growth targets [for the IT industry]." He called on the government to provide tax breaks and partner-with-industry to encourage internships and graduate entry schemes to get young talent into IT and help others transfer across from different industries.
The offshoring of entry level IT jobs has exacerbated the skills shortage by making it increasingly difficult for IT workers to gain the necessary experience to boost their skill level, he added. "Because we are not employing at entry level offshoring will kill our industry stone dead," he warned.
Comments
There are 17 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
and don't forget the older workers who get squeezed out of the industry as they are perceived as being either past it, too expensive or "difficult" in that they have opinions and ideas
there is a vast reservoir of untapped talent in the UK but no one wants to employ anyone in it because of combinations of ageism, sexism and "perfect match for the job because we don't believe in training"ism
I suggest us older workers get together and form our own company as no one else wants to employ us, hands up if you are interested
2. Richard
Paid less than a tanker driver?
Yesterday, I was canvassed for a temporary post which requires professional qualifications and several years experience.
However, the pay was below what the "Shell" tanker drivers have rejected.
Presumably, this employer will now shout: "Skills shortage!"
3. Malcolm
Maybe if the Government and Education authorities accepted that there is an evolving IT world beyond Microsoft and exposed youngsters to a less crusty environment which included Linux, Mac OS-X, Open Source etc, then I'm pretty sure there would be greater interest in IT at Secondary level.
4. Rob Wilmot
From an IT lierate dad with kids learning IT at school, the problem seems to me that IT teachers are teaching material behind the curve of technology. Simply doing and MS Excel spreadsheet, or setting up a MS Word mail-merge does not for interesting IT make. I remember one of the most exciting moments in technology I ever had was setting up my first hyperlink from one web page to another, way back when the web was new. There just doesn't seem to be the equivalent of this in secondary education today. Must do better.
5. Karen Challinor
Richard - I agree the industry used to be a respected profession back in the early days, now the industry has been managed down into commodities to be exploited, by managers who don't understand IT and don't know the difference between software devlopment and word processing
the industry while seen as a key industry is systematically under valued, under appreciated and perhaps most importantly under invested, we bemoan the lack of graduates or available IT professionals with the right skills yet no one is willing to provide training or make the industry more attractive
6. Matt H
Can I have a job please Karen? Living in sunny Stoke-on-Trent, the number of IT jobs on the market are pretty much zero. Companies won't give you a chance because you don't have experience in a particular language, even though 14 years real world IT experience shows that I'm quite capable of learning a new language! When you've got the company set up, give me a shout! :D
7. Andrew Hall
As a supplier of educational software worldwide, we see countries such as Australia, that have modernised their computing curriculum, threatening to leave the UK well behind.
Office software is boring - lets focus computing education on creativity!
8. Karen Challinor
Matt H - Staffs, UK - Snr Web Developer - Can I have a job please Karen?
OK this is the chat room address
http://phoenixgroup.forumcircle.com/
Anyone currently out of work due to age, sexism, racism or any other ism please join, when we get enough members we'll work on starting a company
Sorry about the name I was a bit stuck for inspiration
9. Roger Huffadine
Schools being behind the curve is one issue - Universities being behind the curve is unforgivable but a sad fact of life - In my experience they are 10 years behind the curve of innovative industries. So we get 'graduates' who are also pretty useless for industry & they expect £££ or their lack of skill.
From the recent news about primary maths I'm suspecting that the old adage is still true - "those who can do; those who can't teach" - Let's face it nobody is going to pay the sort of money that I would need to teach my skills to adolescents.
10. anonymous
The problem is quite simple...
... no-one "at the top" knows the difference between how to USE a computer and how it WORKS.
So the teaching of so-called IT in schools is limited to USING a PC - not designing one or the software for use on it.
I don't deny that PC-literacy skills are required, but we must seperate the two disciplines.
Further examples of this blur can be seen on TV quiz shows - how many times do (young) contestants state that their hobby is "computing", only to discover that they are actually referring to playing games on one, not writing software...?
11. Arthur Butterfield
I totally agree - as a former Head of ICT there were many times when the requirement of the specification/syllabus was very routine and lacked any sort of depth, both of understanding of the technology and the advanced use of the software - both for GCSE and A-level and Applied A-level courses. I wanted changes that would give greater challenge as long ago as 1999. It was difficult to recruit students for these and difficult to teach courses that lacked academic vigour. The result now is the shortage of skillsa and understanding that we have for this crucial sector.
12. James Button
I reccomend all students to avoid becoming IT technicians.
If they do, they should expect to:
Have an employable life ending at 45.
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Have to change employers frequently to get any 'advancement' in salary and or 'position'
As per a collegue of mine, where the employers rather than giving him a 10 % pay rise and a 'senior' grading he had earned preferred to recruit and then train up a replacement at 30% more than they were paying him.
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Never get paid more than their supervisor, regardless of that persons lack of technical knowledge and ability.
Have to continually re-train (almost annually) as the systems facilities evolve.
Be deterred from setting up as a business by the governments IR35 approach, and training facilities and grants aimed at organisations with at least 10 employees.
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Re the school IT education, a 16 year old I know was given a new PC.
The training they had received at school did not include any understanding of the setup and management of the PC hardware and software. Just the basic use of the MS Office package MS Word, Outlook and Excel. - not even anything about avoiding malware and other fraudulent activities.
13. sam
The problem is not the curriculum. With the current trend of constant cost cutting, downsourcing and offshoring of anything IT related, as a potential student looking at careers, why would anyone want to go into IT? Other careers are more stable, with a higher likelyhood of making it to retirement. There are too many actual examples of I.T. workers having their jobs churned. Upon finding another job, they find that the pay offered is below a "living wage". For the older worker, they eventually find out that they are "too old", if they get any response at all.
14. Frank squire
I agree with a lot of what has been said. Practically speaking, commoditisation and outsourceing are here to stay because the world is driven by money.
So what can we do? Look for a niche and innovate - do something better than the bog-standard boys. Which of course means that the 'skills' based agenda of our state-controlled education system is woefully inadequate.
15. Graham Wharton
Maybe kids are listening to their parents as well. Its not just off shoring that is "killing" the IT industry, there is also rampant ageism and it probably starts in the late twenties!
Big companies use agencies to "filter out" older candidates and they should be audited but they aren't.
Would I recommend that my son go into IT?? Never in a million years!
16. Richard Sarson
With Web 2.0, social networking, mashups, new mobile applications etc, I find IT more exciting than it has been in all my 55 years in the industry. Why can't the clever fellows in schools and universities transmit this excitement to the young.
My grandson, aged 14, when asked what was the difference between his use of computers in school and at home, gave a one-word answer "creativity".
Are there any creative IT teachers or university lecturers any more?
17. Riaz Sobrany
Employers should take more interest in taking on self educated and home educated people rather than constantly criticising the school and university curriculum. Just because somebody doesn't have paper qualifications or attended a formal education institution doesn't mean they don't have the knowledge or expertise. In today's fast moving world of IT, institutionalised education just can't keep up.
I attended a secondary school in the UK that had no computers. Consequently, it didn't offer a computing GCSE even though I really wanted to do it. In no way did this imply that I left school knowing nothing about computers because I made an effort to learn about them outside of the school classroom.
I had read the computing A Level book and taught myself to program in C at the age of 14, and built a 486 PC from components when I was 15. Much more advanced stuff that the computing GCSE.
Oh, and before anybody thinks I'm from the punched card era, I'm actually only 31.