With IT leaders finding it increasingly difficult to recruit the right talent, and a worrying drop in the number of students being trained in computer science, some experts say the UK is headed for a skills meltdown.

In the context of a competitive global economy, an IT skills shortage could spell disaster for the national economy, because technology is an integral part of, and continues to provide essential support for, every other industrial sector.

The skills issue always sparks fierce debate, but the facts speak for themselves: the UK IT industry is growing five to eight times faster than other sectors and needs 150,000 new entrants each year.

But at the same time the number of students choosing IT-related degrees almost halved from 27,000 to 14,700 between 2001 and 2005.

Anyone with a grasp of simple arithmetic will note that the statistics do not add up.

Even worse, mathematics and computer sciences have the highest university dropout rate in the UK, with one in 10 undergraduates not continuing into a second year of study, according to the National Audit Office.

And to cap it off, IT leaders report a lack of relevant skills within the existing IT workforce as the sector becomes increasingly aligned with the business.

Ian Campbell, chief information officer at British Energy, says hiring is becoming tougher as the skills requirement of the IT industry has changed.

‘Most businesses are standardising on software services and products which have become increasingly generic, so we don’t need such deep technical skills,’ he says.

Campbell says he takes on very few IT graduates, and candidates are usually in their late 20s by the time they have acquired the right experience.

‘At that point we’re competing with the outsourcers and other firms for those staff,’ he says.

Campbell believes IT suffers from an image problem. Such an issue creates a lag between the skills the industry requires, the type of applicants available and what they think employers want.

So with the number of university students studying computer science dropping to an all-time low, and misunderstanding between the skills employers want and the skills candidates have to offer, steps need to be taken to correct the deficiencies in business expertise.

The solution is not clear-cut. While reforming the curricula of IT courses is important, it will not prevent a skills crisis; 70 per cent of the workforce of 2020 has already left compulsory-age education.

As an antidote, the government is now focusing on developing the skills of the UK adult population, with the recently announced implementation plan for the Leitch Review of Skills.

The review was commissioned in 2004 by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, and implementation of the recommendations is being overseen by the newly created Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS).

Published findings in 2005 outlined the importance of world-class skills which the UK must achieve by 2020 to compete in a knowledge-based economy.

Reform of the current skills system must start with a culture change towards learning so that people of all ages and abilities view learning as continuous, says secretary of state John Denham, who heads DIUS. ‘That is why the focus of the implementation plan is on adults,’ he says.

The implementation plan for the Leitch Review’s recommendations was made public in July, unveiling strategies for a new skills system based on the needs of the UK’s employers.

The plan will fulfil skills requirements through a number of different initiatives, including a new Commission for Employment and Skills, greater employer involvement, and a system of Skills Accounts
that will allow employees to manage their own training.

Denham’s new government department has committed itself to a target of 95 per cent functional adult literacy and numeracy by 2020.

But even though the focus is on adult training, the overarching aim of the plan is to increase basic skills levels across all industries.

Such a concentration will not help the IT industry, because most employees are already degree-level candidates and the industry requires a more complex set of skills, says Carrie Hartnell, programme manager for vendor group Intellect.

‘There needs to be careful consideration of what is considered basic education because the current basic standard is not sufficient to compete globally,’ she said.

The problem, then, is not a lack of basic skills but rather a shortage of technically proficient employees with added business skills, says Nick Kirkland, managing director of user group CIO Connect.

In a survey the user group carried out in June, nearly three-quarters of IT leaders expressed frustration at projects failing because they lack skilled staff who could manage them.

‘These findings say much about the challenges facing IT leaders in their businesses,’ says Kirkland. ‘In my experience organisations are increasingly looking to IT to be the engineer and architect of change.’

The survey also highlighted a need for specialised training in project management, leadership and communication skills among IT employees.

‘Putting communication skills, team building and inter-team communications first will improve things,’ says Kirkland.

The government’s skills reforms also cover higher-level training, says David Lammy, parliamentary undersecretary of state for skills.