Getting off to a good digital start

This term thousands of students will have embarked on a new computing curriculum, a welcome first step towards ensuring young people gain the skills needed for a world that’s digital by default. It is, however, very much a beginning. Every job in the future will be a digital job and as such digital skills should be threaded through every subject – not just seen as a matter for the ICT department.
    
In our Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s World report we consider what is really needed to transform a generation enthusiastic about using technology into one with a deeper understanding of how it worked. We considered not just what teachers needed to do but also what government, business and educators need to do, together.
    
It is clear from the many employers we consulted that whilst technical knowledge is valued, to be truly employable students need to be able to communicate, to collaborate, to be resilient and to show attention to detail. There was a view often expressed by employers that perhaps our education system had overlooked these softer skills.  

A key point raised by the majority of organisations, was that technology is a constantly evolving subject, and that we therefore need to instill in our young people a discipline and desire for lifelong learning. The future is one where if your knowledge of technology does not evolve you risk becoming extinct. Some we consulted favoured radical change to our education processes, saying we appeared to be struggling to fit a 21st century subject into a 19th century pot.
    
Below we have set out our recommendations which are directly relevant to schools.  

Invest more
The Government needs to invest at least £20 million by 2020 to help successfully embed the new computing curriculum in schools across England. Government support to up-skill the existing workforce in schools should remain in place for the next decade.

We believe that an additional investment of £20 million over the next Parliament is the absolute minimum needed to help teachers get the training they need for the new subject. This sum was recommended by the experts of the UK Forum for Computing Education, the independent committee which acts as a single voice for the computing community on computing education issues for 5 to 19 year olds.
    
Although 3.5 million has been allocated to up-skill teachers, this is only equivalent to £175 per school across England’s state funded primary and secondary schools. With, for example, Jersey committing the equivalent of £15,750 per school for the same task it is not difficult to see why recent surveys by TES and NESTA found that 60 per cent of England’s teachers are not confident delivering the new computing curriculum.

Preparing teachers
Schools must provide time and support for computing teachers to deepen their subject knowledge and develop their teaching style. Dedicated time for continual professional development is essential for teachers and should be recognised as a core component of being a professional teacher.
    
We believe we need a new approach to CPD as an essential on-going part of pedagogical improvement. Teachers told us that they were sometimes given permission to attend CPD almost as a ‘treat’ – it was viewed as a ‘day off’’. This simply has to change if we are to stand a chance of engendering the lifelong learning approach required for all in this field.

Real life impact
Teachers and students need to be given more time for cross curricular, project based learning. Teachers and students recognised real value in project based learning. When working in teams, on real life examples, preferably their own ideas, students deepened not only formal knowledge of a subject but developed those softer skills employers said they needed.

The benefits of collaboration
Partnerships between schools, colleges, universities and industry need to be developed to enhance careers advice and both the curricular and extra-curricular opportunities available to young people. We believe this is an extraordinarily important point and has a number of dimensions, for examples careers advice. There are added benefits in this approach. If schools work more closely with the technology community there is an opportunity not only to deepen subject knowledge within the curriculum but also the understanding of careers within the digital industry.
    
Currently careers advice, support and guidance is at best patchy and for the most part considered as ‘woeful’ both by those receiving it and their potential employers. However, we cannot blame advisers for not recommending opportunities they do not know exist. Partnerships offer an obvious, mutually beneficial approach to solving that problem.
    
Parent involvement is also key. While many people expect teenagers to turn to the web for advice about their future decisions, TeenTech collected data that identifies parents as the key influencer in young people’s career aspirations and decisions. Parents are well intentioned with their advice but often are not well informed. Parents can be included in the process of partnerships and thereby not only help inform their children’s choices but, almost as importantly, begin the vital task of changing long-term perceptions about careers in technology.
    
A key factor here is not to assume that a career in technology equates to a university education. Students are given little or no information about apprenticeships, let alone about the growing number of digital apprenticeships. This is particularly true in a local economy where businesses close to a school may be crying out for apprentices but often seem unable to attract good candidates due to a perception that it’s a ‘second best’ route.
    
Schools should be encouraged to recruit school governors working in the digital industries to provide expert advice on contemporary skills needed and to provide local contacts for meaningful work experience opportunities. We would also encourage the establishment of an independent network of governors with an interest in computing who can share best practice and exchange resources on preparing for computing.
    
Regarding work experience, all too often this depends on parental ability to provide a contact, so perpetuating social advantage. We feel there is a need for a website to match schools and students with employment or work experience opportunities. This was a recurring theme throughout discussions at our regional meetings and the responses to our call for evidence.
    
For example, one group at our Plymouth regional meeting advocated a ‘clearing house system’ website which could help to connect students with businesses, suggesting that such an approach could be adopted regionally or sub-regionally. The idea was that it might be a version along the lines of ‘LinkedIn for people going through education’. Similarly, at our London regional meeting, we had a fantastic presentation from Juan Guerra, the CEO and Founder of Student Funder on the need for a portal to connect across education and the work of work. A really promising attempt to create such a platform is being pioneered in London by Centre for London’s Connecting Tech City project.

A core science
Computing should become a fourth ‘core science’. There should be a digital component to education and training opportunities for young people up to the age of 19.
    
Every student will need some level of digital skills regardless of their career choice. It seems self-evident to us that with the world so dependent upon digital technologies, young people need an understanding of these technologies in the same way they do for physics, chemistry and biology. If anything, it is more important.

Career choices
One of the issues routinely raised at regional meetings was the age at which teenagers have to choose and narrow the number of subjects they study. Young people have to make decisions that will affect potential career choices before they have any idea what their career choice might be. Data such as that presented by CASE suggests too many state school students are closing down their options at a very early stage by, for example, choosing combined science instead of the separate subjects.
    
We believe that government should address this issue, possibly by adopting something more akin to a Baccalaureate style approach through to the end of secondary education. Such a transition was recently advocated by the Royal Society.
    
In the meantime, students should be helped to understand the subjects that are springboards to many different careers and, perhaps more importantly, students should be warned of the potential for closing off entry into various careers that require digital skills before they give up on that subject. Students should be made aware of the potential consequences of simply choosing subjects that they consider the ‘path of least resistance’.

Allowing experts to teach
The Government should provide a route for experienced professionals in the digital industries to enter the teaching profession via a fast track “Teach Next” route, modelled on Teach First.

It was one of our most surprising findings that so few who enter technology as a higher education choice or as a career subsequently choose to teach. For the same reasons that we believe computing should be a fourth science, and given the success in encouraging those with science backgrounds to enter teaching, we feel that the same should be attempted for those with computing skills.
    
This makes sense not only in its own right but as an adjunct to the other recommendations above it can serve only to strengthen the ability of schools to teach and advise in this field

Further information
www.teentech.com