Home : Public Sector : Analysis & Insight

The kids are alright… aren’t they?

With falling interest in IT in schools, what can be done to reinvigorate enthusiasm for such a key subject?

By Tom Brewster, 16 Aug 2010 at 16:46

gallery

Given the importance of IT, both now and in the future, surely school kids should be flocking to computing courses.

Instead, the numbers of pupils taking part in computing and IT classes has dropped significantly in the past 10 years.

The problem has become so serious that the Royal Society has ordered a report into what can be done to reverse the falling enrolment numbers, with some heavyweight organisations like Google and Microsoft offering their support.

We spoke to Dr Bill Mitchell, director at the BCS Academy of Computing, about why kids are not signing up for ICT, and what can be done to turn the trend around.

Do you believe the Government is doing enough to support teaching in schools?

The Government has to wake up to the fact that what is going on in schools is a disaster, as far as IT is concerned. There is a certain denial, as far as I can tell, from Government: they don’t actually understand what computing is.

They know lots of people seem to be getting training in IT and they think that’s the same as understanding computing, which it isn’t.

In most schools, you have teachers who are struggling to cope because they are not specialists. That isn’t their fault, they are doing the best they can. They deliver teaching which amounts to showing kids how to use Word, use PowerPoint, use Excel, and use office productivity tools. Of course, this is nothing at all to do with computing.

Why has there been such a decline in interest in IT amongst youngsters?

I think one of the issues is that there aren’t enough specialist computing teachers. There are a lot of very keen teachers, but they don’t have the background. They want to be able to deliver high quality computing in schools, but they don’t have the resources or the support network to help them do that.

I think the most important factor in changing what goes on in schools is working with the teachers.

Is there any disparity between types of schools in terms of the quality of computing teaching?

I think it is pot luck. It depends whether you happen to get a specialist computing teacher who is enthusiastic and keen, or not. That isn’t necessarily down to it being a private school or a state school, it is just down to whether they were able to find a teacher who knows enough about computing and can actually get that across.

This isn’t about teacher bashing – the teachers actually want to do a good job. They just don't have the tools available to them to do their job.

What skills should teachers be looking at targeting?

If you look at the way they teach maths in school, they’re not trying to generate people who do new mathmatics research. They’re talking about the fundamental importance of teaching mathematics and understanding mathematics to all schoolchildren, no matter the job you will end up doing.

The same is true for computing. What are the fundamentals you need to understand with computing? Well, algorithms, data structures, how networks work, the fact that you’re trying to automate the creation, the understanding and the exploitation of knowledge – that’s what computers do. But that does not come across.

What will the Royal Society report address?

The main question is what is the value of teaching computing to schoolchildren as far as the UK is concerned. That is one of the fundamental questions, because if you don’t believe there is value then there’s no point in worrying about it at all.

1 2

Email to a friend

Print this page

< Previous Public Sector : Analysis & Insight Next >

2 comments

You need to Login or Register to comment.

Dont go into IT

If the job can be done via a compuetr screen then it can be done by a china man in china for a bowl of rich. There is NO future in IT in developed high cost countries. Not a day goes by when i dont hear of more jobs flocking out of the uk to low cost countries. I've been in IT for nearly 30 yrs and I'm still employed but I don't believe that will be for very much longer. I dont recommend IT for my kids. We need plumbers!

By mickxxx on Tuesday Aug 17

Stay away from IT

I have been working in IT for the last 15 years of my life. When I started I loved it immensely, it was so much fun. I still do but if there was anything else at all I could do I would get out of it in a shot. You never know when that tap on your shoulder will arrive to tell you to go and get the job elsewhere as your position has been 'outsourced'. Not a day goes by that you don't hear about outsourcing. Things have changed within my company to the point of being desperate. The quality of work is absolutely shockingly bad but the low cost of producing it is the only thing that matters nowadays. How very shortsighted. The cost of labor may have gone down but the overall cost of providing service to the business is gone through the roof. The additional cost of wrestling with countless new problems introduced with poor testing, terrible quality of code,providing it runs to begin with, which most of the time simply gets overwritten as fixing it would take way too long, countless errors if the application even goes live etc. That is the incalculable cost that is not visible to the business users. I have applied a lot of pressure on my niece and nephew not to get into IT under any circumstances and now they are really grateful for it. I read the report that Pentagon in USA is panicking because nobody wants to study IT any more so Americans are worried about 'loosing technological edge'. They've lost that a long time ago. Why would anybody in their right mind want to spent years pumping money into their child's education knowing darn well that a few years down the line their jobs will not be there any more. I know a lot of people that lost their jobs in IT especially in the last few years. Most of them left IT allthgether and would not even consider coming back. I am spending every day of my life trying to do the same.

By Ananda on Tuesday Aug 24