National Curriculum

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the objective at paragraph 1.1 of the consultation to,

“ensure that all children are taught the essential knowledge in the key subject disciplines”,

and the proposal to replace the current ICT curriculum with a new computing curriculum with more emphasis on practical programming skills. I also welcome the recognition that we have a moral obligation to the youth of today to ensure that they have the essential skills and tools to function in an increasingly digital world.

There is a massive IT skills shortage across all industries, due to the decline in numbers of computer science graduates. The UK Council of Professors and Heads of Computing estimates that there is a 15% rise in demand for IT professionals, while the number of students aiming for jobs in the industry has fallen by 50% since 2001. The number of people studying any form of computer science in the UK has fallen by between 24% and 28% since 2002.

In London, IT provides 48,000 digital economy jobs, more than double the number of such jobs 15 years ago at the time of the dotcom boom. This progress is under severe threat by a skills shortage, namely an undersupply of skilled developers and technicians within the UK, and technology firms blame ill designed university syllabuses and a lack of understanding at all levels of the education system. The number of young people studying IT has fallen correspondingly with the standard of ICT teaching from school to university over the past 15 years. Graduates have therefore become ill equipped to enter a competitive jobs market meaningfully, and overseas students are often better qualified. We must therefore recognise that curriculum reform is required in higher education, not just in schools.

Computer science is the fourth science on our educational curriculum, although there does not appear to be any provision to educate primary school teachers in the discipline. As the introduction of this document says:

“No education system can be better than the quality of its teachers”.

There is also a shortage of teachers in computer science in secondary schools, with no incentive for top graduates to enter the profession.

Something else that must be mentioned is the gender imbalance among students of computer science at a higher level. In 2012 the ratio of female to male students was 1:100. Fewer than 300 female students in the whole of the UK take computing A-level each year. Only 18% of graduates from IT-related courses are female. This represents a huge loss of opportunity and potential skilled personnel, which will ultimately leave us less competitive in the long term.

Last week, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, I had the pleasure of hosting an event in this House on computer science education in the 21st century. I met several extremely bright and enthusiastic young female teachers who, it was obvious to me, cared deeply about their subject and their pupils. This makes the loss of opportunity even greater.

Perhaps it would be best if the department facilitated greater engagement and communication between the ICT industry and higher education, to design courses that prepared graduates for industry and made them a great asset to the industry as a whole. Graduates do not and will not always have the perfect skill sets to fit the job. However, employers must be more amenable to offering periods of training to bring new graduates up to speed in areas where they need to recruit, and realise that it does no good complaining about a lack of a competent workforce if they are not prepared to help to fix the problem themselves.

Industry could also become more involved in lower-level ICT teaching, for example in primary and secondary schools. It is important that the Government engage these businesses and use their guidance in shaping the ICT education of our children. It is not just the state’s job to rise to this challenge; it is also incumbent on big corporations and employers. Having reaped the benefits of our educational system and careers in ICT, they have a moral obligation to continue this legacy.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to the report of the SME committee, on which I had the privilege to sit. It is perfectly obvious that exports, businesses and SMEs are damaged by the lack of language skills. That was made very clear in the evidence that we took. It is also clear that there must be a more practical relationship between education generally and industry. What is the point of educating young people for jobs that are not there, when we need to educate them for the jobs that are there? The people who know what the jobs are are the people who need employees, so they should be integrated in the formation of any curriculum.