Tech skills key to UK's future, says Brown

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Schools must push science and innovation skills to meet the needs of business in the future, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at the annual conference of the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI).

In a speech, Brown said the UK would need to work at attracting and retaining the best businesses in the world. "This requires a long term approach to the advancement of science and innovation in the UK - building on our 10 year science framework which links the universities, research institutes and knowledge centres to business, the £15 billion allocated to medical research, and the new public-private Energy Technologies Institute."

Brown also said that to stay competitive in the global market, the UK would need to have a well-trained workforce. "And up against the competition of over two billion people in China and India - with five million graduates a year - Britain, a small country, cannot compete on low skills but only on high skills."

Paul Smith, global managing director for IT recruitment firm Harvey Nash, said on the conference sidelines that skills were a major issue. "What clearly came out of the conference and debate is the necessity for us as a nation that people are skilled top to bottom," Smith said. "The real problem is getting enough students into university with IT skills."

"We should be getting real. Successive governments have failed to solve the problem of sufficient science graduates," he added.

Smith blamed the failure to encourage students into technology-related subjects on governments and the education system. "The policy of government was non-competition," he said. "Being compliant to student wishes...they take an easy route like an arts degree."

According to Smith, the government needs to offer incentives to business and schools, and take away the "nerdy" stereotype still plaguing the sector. He also said people should look to technology leaders for inspiration. "We need to reintroduce the idea that anyone out there can be a Bill Gates," he said.

But he warned that growing up with gadgets and Web 2.0 won't be enough to drive innovation in the IT sector. "Using a keyboard or being able to search doesn't make you into a tech expert," he stressed. "Basic mathematics is what is required."

The UK is falling behind other countries - such as China, Russia and Vietnam - when it comes to education in tech-friendly subjects such as maths, he said. "We're just not competing intellectually with these so-called third-world countries," Smith said. "They're leap-frogging us with skills and attitude."

Indeed, the UK could come to depend on such foreign skills. Smith said encouraging highly-skilled immigrants would continue to be a key aspect of the UK economy, especially in the IT sector. "It's a vital tactic to be taking with an aging population, rising costs and competition from India and Japan," Smith said.

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