Computing curriculum shake-up can’t happen in a single five-year parliamentary term, says panel

Education system ‘failing’

Clarke claimed that the UK education system is “failing” to give children the love of learning they will need in order to foster the attitude for continuous learning later in life, mainly because the focus on exams “suffocates” teachers’ ability to bring fun into the classroom.

In an automated future, creative and softer skills will be vital because these are the skills that will be harder to replicate in machines.

Paul Curzon, professor of computer science at Queen Mary University of London, said more needs to be done to “inspire fun” in education, because this makes learning more accessible.

“The creative subjects in schools matter as well,” he said. “You need to be creative to code.”

Although the computing curriculum does what it can to teach children about technology concepts, Curzon said it is “fragile”, mainly because of a lack of teachers and the inability to quickly introduce new concepts, such as AI, automation, quantum computing or robotics, which will soon be a big part of people’s day-to-day lives.

This means that as well as the skills gap in the technology sector, there will be a lack of people with the digital skills to navigate through their everyday jobs and lives – a pattern that is already forming.

Curzon added: “It’s not just that we need a skilled workforce – we actually need people who are wise, people who understand the technology and the ethics and the consequences.”

Inspire people to be teachers

To fuel the pipeline, said Curzon, we also need to inspire people to be teachers as well as to be interested in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem), but he claimed the UK has “stopped valuing” teachers.

“I think the first thing that is the immediate issue is actually supporting teachers,” he said. “We need to get more of our students interested in teaching as a career themselves.”

But the teachers the education system already has lack confidence in their ability to teach concepts such as coding, and some panellists suggested teachers should be allowed a sabbatical in the industry to get a better idea of what it’s like and then come back with ideas.

Andy Lawson, general manager of Salesforce UKI, called for more collaboration between industry and education providers to help teachers make Stem sound more exciting and make it clear what technology roles involve.

Some firms try to tackle this knowledge gap by inviting people from industry to talk about their jobs at local schools, and Lawson said doing this will help “change the dynamic” of the workplace, the industry and classrooms.

Interesting projects

As the younger generation enter the workplace, they expect a lot from their employers, and some have already warned that if the workplace doesn’t match up to young people’s expectations, they will look elsewhere. Lawson pointed out that young people want to work on interesting projects, such as building games.

“We have to learn as an industry that if we want the next generation of developers to come into our organisations, we have to make it exciting,” he said.

But this doesn’t address the need to teach children that they will have to carry on learning and adapting after they have left school.

Dev Amratia, co-founder and CEO of nPlan, said teachers need to be able to teach children to have “creative freedom” as well as to be resilient – things that are very difficult to teach.

“There needs to be a bit more of a reboot of the education system,” he said, “which is a far bolder statement to make than tinkering with the curriculum.”

Amratia concluded that it is “unrealistic” to think any government can completely change the education system in the ways that are needed, during a single term in power.