Service and IT delivery are the two pillars that the UK economy is now built on, but are our schools reflecting the massive shift in skills requirements?
The UK is officially a service-led economy. Barometer figures, such as a purchasing managers index, regularly remind us that service is the one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy trading market.
The importance of effective IT delivery is therefore two-fold. Not only is flexible, user-friendly technology a crucial component for underpinning front-line services, IT services is a huge contributor to the economy in its own right. The UK has traditionally been a leading player in the IT services space, with skills and consultancy of huge value to technologically advanced economies and in great demand from emerging nations attempting to build out their capabilities and accommodate huge growth potential.
Yet are we driving through the skills needed to ensure our technology is up to the challenge? The Royal Society doesn’t think so and has called on the government to address what it sees as an imbalance in schools. The Society has found that just 35 per cent of ICT teachers are specialists in their field, compared to 80 per cent of English, 74 per cent of maths and 88 per cent of biology teachers.
“Our study found some fantastic examples of teaching, but the fact remains that the majority of teachers are not specialists and we heard from young people that they often knew more than the teacher giving the lesson. Action is needed not only on the curriculum itself, but also to recruit and train many more inspiring teachers to reinvigorate pupils’ enthusiasm for computing,” says Professor Steve Furber, fellow of the Royal Society, who added that the number of students achieving A level Computing has fallen 60 per cent since 2003.
As Furber suggests, what incentive is there for students to pursue computing qualifications if those teaching it can offer them little in the way of guidance? Clearly, this is a complex political issue with no simple solution, and the Royal Society hopes that a planned overhaul of the National Curriculum programme will start addressing the problem. However, it is difficult to envisage IT experts being drawn to work in education without a radical rethink of how teaching resources are sourced. IT professionals with the level of real-world experience that would allow them to teach and inspire the next generation of students are already in great demand, meaning their wages will be prohibitive for schools to match.
Perhaps a better approach would be to develop partnerships between schools and IT specialists, operating in a similar fashion to vocational college or university courses. Clearly, students would benefit from practical experience and the specialism of the private sector, while IT shops will be helping to address an IT shortage that is likely to grow much larger if the Royal Society’s figures are to be believed.
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