Government under pressure to change IT curriculum

IT education needs to be more relevant and exciting, experts argue

European e-Skills Week passed largely unnoticed last week, given the number of important issues raised during the event.

Commentators said that poor IT education in the UK is leading to a lack of adequate IT professionals, as well as a growing pool of business users unable to satisfy the technology demands of their roles, and a widening digital divide in society as a whole.

The consensus is that Europe will lose out to worldwide competitors in technology innovation unless the region radically improves IT education in schools and at university level, and will struggle in its path to economic recovery.

The week saw IT skills experts put forward ideas on how IT education can be improved, and how the profession can be better promoted to young people. The shortfall of women in the sector was also raised as a key factor in Europe's lack of IT skills, and commentators suggested ways in which school education can be changed to encourage more women into the sector.

The government has yet to respond to the issues raised. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have said that the issue of e-skills is too specific to be commented on yet, but that they will have a policy by the time of the general election.

Technology trade association Intellect hosted the event in the UK beginning with a conference at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that brought together policy makers, education experts and industry specialists.

André Richier, the principal administrator for the European Commission, led the discussion at the event, warning of a potential 350,000 shortfall in European IT practitioners by 2015. He said that only 10 per cent of all jobs in the EU will not require e-skills in five years' time, and that the number of young people enrolling on computer science courses has been declining since 2003.

Richier explained that Europe is coping with the current shortfall in IT practitioners by bringing them in from other professions, so much so that half of Europe's four million IT practitioners are not IT degree qualified.

However, Richier said this was not the answer and called for Europe to increase the professionalism of its IT workforce in order to match the expertise evident in the US and Japan and increasingly in India and China.

While Richier acknowledged that IT practitioners with degrees in other subjects can bring much needed skills to the profession, such as project management experience, he maintained the need for a professional degree in IT as well.

"You sometimes get people with no training that are cowboys or charlatans. I find that chief executives are often worried about such people," he said.

British Computer Society chief executive David Clarke argued that the teaching of IT at school needs to be less "boring" and "secretarial", and more in-touch with modern times.

Margaret Sambell, head of strategy and planning for e-Skills UK, told V3.co.uk that she agreed with Clarke's comments at the event. E-Skills UK is the skills council for business and IT, and works with employers to address demands in the sector.

"Teaching hasn't kept up with the pace of technological change. The way young people use technology is moving at a much faster rate than the school curriculum, and many don't see the benefit of studying IT," she said.

"Employers are concerned that what is taught in schools doesn't inspire students or give them the foundations for IT-related higher education or for careers in a technology-enabled world."

Sambell added that e-Skills UK is campaigning for the improvement of GCSEs and A-levels so that the curriculum is made exciting for young people and encourages them to pursue IT in academia.

She also said that her organisation had developed a number of its own programmes for students to learn technology that would be more relevant in their career paths.

When it came to IT graduates, Sambell said that employers are generally pleased with their technical abilities, but are concerned about a lack of business skills.

"This is particularly important given that the growth in IT professional employment in the UK is increasingly demanding hybrid business and technical capability," she said.

As part of e-Skills Week, IT companies joined with e-Skills UK to publish a manifesto which recognises the urgent need for IT professionals, and calls for the government to improve IT education and young people's experience of studying the subject.

Companies backing the manifesto include Cable & Wireless, Cisco, Logica, HP, IBM, Quicksilva, BA, National Grid, UBS and Whitbread.

Lizzie Holman, senior policy advisor at the Confederation of British Industry's (CBI's) Education and Skills Group, produced evidence showing that IT education problems continue to degree level.

For example, according to CBI statistics, some 64 per cent of science, high-technology and IT employers believe that the content of degrees is not relevant to their needs.

V3.co.uk readers contributed their opinions on how IT education can be improved. Reader Arthur Butterfield said that ICT courses are failing students because the shortfall of IT professionals includes teachers.

"Having been a head of ICT for many years I watched helplessly as other teaching staff with no real appreciation or understanding came in to teach the subject. Shortages of real ICT teachers continue, and we will always get ICT lessons being no more than basic office skills," he said.

Meanwhile, a V3.co.uk reader called Josmould Herringpole insisted that IT education should be updated to keep pace with the Web 2.0 era.

"If it were up to me I'd teach things like how Facebook or Twitter work behind the scenes, or I'd run joint art [and] ICT projects involving digital cameras, video and music," he said.

The e-skills week saw broad agreement among experts on the need for the government to improve the IT curriculum and teaching in UK schools, but a number of commentators also suggested that the lack of IT professionals and poor IT skills held by business users can only be stemmed if the subject starts to be seen as cool and begins to attract women.

Richier discussed the need for a "broad spectrum alliance" between the government, business and media to better promote the profession to young people. "The image of the IT practitioner will soon no longer be a nerd," he said.

Richier's call to promote the profession was joined by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), a non-profit association based in Brussels.

ACT president Jonathan Zuck suggested that policymakers could put in place a tax incentive for businesses to train workers to stay up to date with the latest IT technologies.

"Empowering employers with the ability to train their workers through tax incentives can be more effective than funding grants," he said.

Sue Black, head of the department of information and software systems at the University of Westminster, argued that young people need better IT role models. "For example they should have someone in EastEnders in an IT role," she said.

Richier continued to discuss the lack of women in IT. An expected shortage of over 350,000 IT practitioners in five years' time means that Europe needs to consider making the profession more appealing to half of its resource pool, he said, referring to the fact that only one in five IT practitioners are women, yet in other sciences the number of women has been increasing.

"In ICT there were more women in the profession proportionate to men in the 1980s than there are now. This is the only science where they are declining," he said.

Richier explained that part of the European Commission's strategy is to get more women into board positions. "The head of Europe's digital strategy is a woman, which is a positive start," he said.

Meanwhile, Maggie Berry, director of Women in Technology, maintained that the lack of women studying IT is down to poor mentoring and the absence of role models.

"I think that the use of social networking sites means that girls can follow leading IT entrepreneurs from all over the world. If women were to go into schools to talk about IT courses, it plants a seed that it is an option for girls," she said.

Berry added that students should be given more work experience, and that there should be more compulsory options in science and IT, even at university level.

Not specifically addressing the IT women shortfall, Berry suggested that schools could help fight the decreasing numbers of IT practitioners by covering a wider range of subjects in their technology courses, including hardware, networks, telephony, mobile communications, software design, gaming and imaging.