Tomorrow’s talent: cracking the code on skills

With the IT skills gap continuing to widen, going back to the classroom is proving to be an effective
way to inspire the next generation of IT professionals.

Earlier this year, the UK’s CBI was vocal in its criticism of central government and its lack of attention to the growing gap in IT skills. Katja Hall, CBI Chief Policy Director, said: “Growth and jobs in the future will depend on the UK having a workforce that can exploit new technologies and discoveries. The growing skills vacuum is threatening the recovery, as demand from firms is outstripping supply.”

A new generation of technically qualified workers is badly needed. In their report ‘Technology and Skills in the Digital Industries’, e-skills UK and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) concluded that the digital sector alone would need at least 300,000 workers to “maximise its potential”.

Until recently there had been a focus on undergraduate training in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), yet nearly three-quarters of UK universities say there aren’t enough people being trained to the standard needed. To tackle this lack of training and interest in science-based subjects, a new wave of initiatives is literally going back to the classroom to inspire the next generation of engineers.

Kids can code

Globally, the pace of development in technology is outstripping the pace of education, which is a real concern to any business with even a small reliance on keeping their IT skills up to date. Bill Liao is the founder of CoderDojo, an international movement of coding clubs run by volunteers for young people around the world. He says: “There are only two countries in the world where code is taught at schools en masse: Estonia and Vietnam. In college it is often too late for students to get really fluent in code, so even if the thinking is joined-up, there are massive drop-out rates and many are coming out ill-equipped to be serious coders.”

At Hays, we value the importance of teaching children the basics of computer coding and actively supports the work done by CoderDojo. In fact, we recently supported a special event hosted by the Duke of York at Buckingham Palace.

Other initiatives such as Codecademy offer similar courses. The challenge is to teach the fundamental skills that future generations will need in the future of work. Formal education will be important, says digital strategist Ade McCormack, as “while anyone can teach themselves programming, if they don’t understand the underlying principles, they are likely to write inelegant software that, in turn, will be poor quality.”

Teaching computer coding in schools offers a ray of hope, and looks set to transform how the UK approaches the IT skills that are needed, both now and in the future. The UK’s 2014 national curriculum replaces ICT with a new subject succinctly called ‘computing’, and children between the ages of eight and 11 will be able to design and write computer programs that can fulfil specific goals. The change in emphasis is a welcome way to get our children thinking more analytically, instead of simply equipping them with the skills to use ICT devices.

Mike McDonagh, Business Director, Hays Ireland comments: “Certainly in Ireland, it’s accepted that too much of our education system is focused on rote learning, when focusing on the ability to learn anything would surely produce more sustainable, flexible and rounded individuals who can then go on and learn whatever skills their marketplace requires as the economic world evolves.”

Code Club is another nationwide network of free, volunteer-led after-school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. Laura Kirsop, its Managing Director, outlines how coding is much more than simply learning a computer programming language: “Our goal is to inspire children to build and share their ideas, learning along the way,” she explains. “We want children to leave Code Club inspired to pursue other digital making activities, whether that’s in their spare time, in school or as a career. We want them to gain skills that are useful to them – not only learning to program, but also learning about computational thinking, problem solving, designing, collaborating and sharing.”

Ensuring that coding is on national curricula promises a positive impact on the continued gender gap in computer science and allied fields too. Google has been proactive in this area with its Hangouts on Air, where female engineers talk about their experiences in the industry, and the business has been using its Code Jam (now in its eleventh year) to inspire a new generation of coders.

Liao adds: “I think most business owners are frustrated that it is so hard now to get hold of good technical people, and particularly good developers and designers. Simply put, if you are a coder poet (so fluent in a programming language that you can combine creativity with economy of expression), it is not about finding a job, it’s about beating employers off with a stick while you either choose the job that suits you best or start your own empire.”

Education into employment

Unemployment has remained stubbornly high across Europe, with French President François Hollande stating in McKinsey’s Education to Employment: Getting Europe’s Youth into Work: “At stake is the future of an entire generation.”

The UK, then, is one of the few EU countries to take a root and branch approach to skills shortages. However, instead of ploughing more resources into the graduate market, it has focused on longer-term initiatives that should produce a new workforce equipped with not only the technical skills that employers now demand, but also the analytical minds business in technical sectors crave. It’s an encouraging step forward for employers and employees alike.

Professor Paul Curzon, Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London, points out that, “teaching programming in schools isn’t really just about learning programming, it’s about gaining thinking skills to work in a high-tech economy. More generally, it matters because the world is now a virtual world as well as a physical one. Just as students need to understand physics to understand how the physical world works, they need to understand computing to understand how the virtual world works.”