Last week saw the publication of the House of Commons Committee’s science and technology report, which discusses the coverage and depth of digital skills in the UK economy.
Titled ‘Digital Skills Crisis’, it sets out that, despite digital services being increasingly embedded in society, "there is a digital divide where up to 12.6 million of the adult UK population lack basic digital skills…this digital skills gap is costing the UK economy an estimated £63 billion a year in lost additional GDP".
The report identifies a mixture of a lack of resources and skills training as contributing to the digital skills gap, with 22% of schools having "inadequate" IT equipment. Additionally, only 35% of IT teachers hold relevant qualifications. It recommends that the government sets a target for the recruitment of Computer Science teachers in line with similar targets in Maths and Physics.
The report commends current government efforts to focus on computing in the national curriculum, but urges further action by requesting that Ofsted "include[s] the computing curriculum in their inspections and require schools to deliver credible, sustainable plans for embedding computing", as well as using them to champion the use of freely available resources.
They also advocate further government investments in teacher training to support the IT curriculum, alongside current initiatives such as Teach First and Master Teachers. The ICT aspects of these and other programmes should be "scaled up" alongside other measures, such as more attractive remuneration packages (in line with private sector pay scales) and allowing schools to recruit more teachers from outside of the European Union.
A key recommendation is to get employers’ views represented by working with the established Tech Partnership to create a forum where employers can inform the computing curriculum to ensure that it reflects up-to-date industry practice, and can align with the latest digital careers. This forum would then become a springboard for the industry to engage with schools on a wide range of work placement opportunities, and align with Apprenticeships and providing overall career advice. Employers and the industry could provide support through an upscaling of coding clubs.
A common recommendation across all sectors of education is that "the government needs to work with employers and educators to better understand and address why female students in schools, colleges and universities do not apply for digital courses and careers’ and ‘to focus on other areas beyond gender — looking at other diverse backgrounds such as disability, ethnicity and disadvantaged socio-economic groups—so that children and young people can have a wide range of role models to inspire them to study and pursue careers in STEM" – resonating with similar recommendations and concerns heard elsewhere about increasing diversity in STEM careers.
This is no doubt a challenging and stretching set of recommendations. It is, however, the Committee’s view that "only urgent action from industry, schools and universities and from the government can prevent [the digital skills] crisis from damaging our productivity and economic competitiveness". As the report notes, digital skills are on the government’s agenda, and we’ll have to await further announcements around their strategy to see whether these recommendations will be taken on board.
