IT leaders from enterprises across a range of industries were united today in a call for schools and education authorities to urgently address problems with the way IT is being taught to UK children.
The debate took place at today's Westminster eForum entitled "Skills for the UK Digital Economy – delivering the IT professionals of the future".
There is disconnect between the way that IT is used in the workplace and how it is delivered in the classroom, said attendees.
This observation is highlighted by the finding that of the 28,787 teachers who qualified in the UK in 2010, just three hold a degree in computing, according to IT industry body BCS.
Meanwhile, the proportion of professionals in the IT industry who are under the age of 30 has dropped from 33 per cent in 2001 to just 19 per cent today, in which time the number of over 50s in the industry has doubled, according to findings from industry skills body e-Skills UK.
BT's head of skills, Andy Palmer, said it is time that schools begin to interact with the industry to understand how best to deliver IT education.
"IT education in the UK doesn't align to requirements of future employers or the requirements that our customers have of their future employees," he said.
"GCSE and A-level ICT and computing are focused on using IT to produce outcomes, rather than exploring the application of IT to make improvements to processes or encouraging development of new products and services.
"Study of such nature goes no way to prepare students for employment and does not prepare them technically for the challenges they would face studying computing at university," he said.
He added that the future requirements in the IT industry include knowledge not only of IT, but also of business management and the high level of emotional intelligence necessary to have strong management skills.
"We do also need deep technical people, but these are the exceptions, not the rule," added Palmer.
The curriculum used in schools to study ICT and computing at GCSE and A-Level was also heavily criticised from within the education sector.
Drew Buddie, head of ICT at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, argued that even at AS-level, the skills taught to students are not challenging enough and will not prepare them for any sort of future in the IT industry.
"The current AS-level coursework, which is studied by students in year 12, has four main aspects. One is to create a relational database - I don't know what value that has," he said.
"The second is to simply make a mail merge document and provide list of names and data, and that's not very challenging. And the third is something that much younger kids can do: to produce a six-slide slideshow using all the things that we tell those younger kids not to do – things like sound effects and animations. And the fourth is simply to produce a document using Microsoft Publisher. This is where the perception that IT is a froivolous subject to study comes from."
With the UK expected to need an additional 500,000 IT professionals by 2016, and with online business estimated to be worth £100bn to the UK economy, representing 7.2 per cent of the national GDP, e-Skills CEO Karen Price warned that the UK needs to act fast to remedy the impending skills gap or risk losing opportunities overseas to foreign workers or outsourcing firms.
"If we don't act now, our global competitors will be more than happy to pop in – places like India and China have thousands of candidates queuing up to take these roles," she warned.
This has come at a really opportune time, I am revising all my courses at key stage 4 and 5, what should I be looking for from a course?
I have been told that I cannot offer the Advanced Diploma and that OCR's will probably go? What do you suggest we offer?
Posted by: Carolyn Wort 28 Feb 2011
The statistic that just 3 of the 28,787 teachers who qualified in the UK in 2010 hold a degree in computing was announced by the IT industry body BCS at the Westminster eForum entitled "Skills for the UK Digital Economy".
This author does not claim to have commissioned any professional research into the studies undertaken by the UK's teaching workforce, and is merely reporting the findings of BCS' research, as it was stated at this event.
Posted by: Dawinderpal Sahota 17 Feb 2011
"The current AS-level coursework, which is studied by students in year 12, has four main aspects. One is to create a relational database - I don't know what value that has," he said.
Says it all really.
I'm guessing that, given the other tasks all involve using Microsoft office, this is not what the actual coursework is at all.
This man has no clue. I'm horrified.
For non-IT readers, the database your posts are stored in is probably a mySQL relational database, as is the database that holds the barcodes of your shopping. These things are important, revolutionize a business when correctly implemented, and are completely out of place in a course on How To Use Word. I'm guessing the kids actually learn how to use MS Access like an advanced version of Excel.
Posted by: Sam 16 Feb 2011
"One is to create a relational database - I don't know what value that has."
In the days of Web 2.0 how anyone can say that a knowledge of relational databases has no value to the IT industry is incredulous. This is one of the key things underpinning most IT systems today and at the very least knowledge of them and how they work and are created should be essential.
On the subject of the BCS statistics of those 28,787 teachers who qualified in 2010 how many were actually qualifying as ICT teachers? The statistics as listed are pretty meaningless as there are many relevant degrees for the IT industry (Physics and Maths for example) even if they are not specifically "Computing" degrees. Furthermore even though some of those teachers have no degree in "Computing" that doesn't mean that they may not have relevant industry experience as they may have been working in the IT industry for several years with a degree in a related subject and surely that IT industry experience is far more relevant to an awareness of the needs within the IT industry...
Posted by: J. Newton 12 Feb 2011
The IT Diploma was designed by e-Skills in collaboration with Education 'partners'. A well considered response to industry needs/wants whilst maintaining academic rigour. The qualification enabled students to integrate a variety of additional specialist learning such as CISCO Discovery, IT Essentials. Applied, work-based learning combined with academic study offers a credible alternative pathway to GCSE/GCE syllabi which now appear rather dated. Given the significant drop in A-level computing entries - 58% in 8 years - (source: Joint Council Qualifications, JCQ) - perhaps more questions should be asked as to why the IT Diploma is not being offered to pupils as an alternative to A-level Computing.
Posted by: Bruce Nightingale 12 Feb 2011
This is totally untrue, two of the computing teachers out of four in our department have computing degrees and the other two degrees in IT I have also worked with many teachers at different organisations with computing degrees. This article has used a statistic to totally bend the truth.
Posted by: M Sheehy 11 Feb 2011
Three of our four teachers have computer science degrees, so we must be the only school in the country with any. According to those statistics at least. The other has a electronics degree, and is out best computing teacher.
The reason many schools do have people teaching without the relevant qualifications is that the subject is not valued by many schools and authorities. Several areas don't teach it as a discrete subject at key stage 3 at all. Unless it is given a higher status then this is likely to continue. Disappointingly I see that has been removed from the recently published list of core key stage 3 subjects, so this doesn't appear to be likely to happen.
Posted by: J Partridge 11 Feb 2011
20 years business experience and a masters may well be more than adequate to teach A-level ICT, so the argument in the article could be interpretted as somewhat biased - however:
MSc IT ≠ BSc Computing
To be fair the best ICT teacher in the school I work in was a Physics graduate - others in the department included a social science graduate and an IT graduate. None of the above were computing graduates and most left a lot to be desired when it came to knowledge of the subject they were teaching. That's before you get to the "trainers" (unqualified teachers - who don't hold a degree at all) who teach ICT.
Too many people in schools teach ICT with no relevant qualification, no interest in the subject and no real knowledge of the industry and the technology they use daily. That is as much of a problem as the very poor syllabus.
Posted by: Withheld 10 Feb 2011
Well, unless I am 1 of the 3 I would question your statistics? I have an MSc in IT which was a condensed version of a 4-year BSC in Computing. I also have 20 years business experience.
The new AQA Computing specification is very rigorous and was approved by several universities. Teachers can liaise with a forum called Computing at School. However A-level ICT does need a major overhaul.
Posted by: Hannah Robertson 10 Feb 2011
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