A charge often levelled at Jersey and Guernsey when it comes to developing strong digital industries is that there’s a distinct lack of skilled workers in the islands. What is perhaps more worrying is that the right people don’t seem to be coming through the ranks. The failure of the British National Curriculum to effectively teach computer science and – perhaps more importantly – a passion for all things digital has resulted in a dearth of skilled employees for the IT industry across the board.
When one examines the figures for the islands, it makes pretty miserable reading. As Marc Lainé, Island Manager for IT consultants C5 Alliance, and until last year Guernsey’s Deputy Minister for Commerce and Employment, points out: “In December 2011, there were 800 students [from Guernsey] in UK university courses, of which 12 were studying computer-related subjects. In Jersey, there were 1,339 students studying in the UK, of which just 42 were studying IT courses. That’s around two per cent of students from Guernsey and three per cent from Jersey.”
To understand why there’s such a gap between the islands’ aspirations and their skills base, we should look at the UK National Curriculum, which both islands follow.
The curriculum brings digital skills together under the term ICT (Information and Communications Technology) and then breaks down learning into the following five ‘key concepts’: capability; communication and collaboration; exploring ideas and manipulating information; impact of technology; and critical evaluation. Throughout key stages one to four (five to 16 years old) during which IT is taught to UK pupils, the focus is on exploring how it can be used to communicate information to others.
When looking at the National Curriculum in detail, while there are opportunities for students to look in greater depth at the structure of database building and other technical areas, there is very little aimed at teaching students how computers work. The focus instead is on computing as a medium for presenting information, and this is a problem for businesses, says Joanna Paplowska, Performance Director at the UK’s Corporate IT Forum.
“From a business perspective, our members strongly feel that, at the moment, teaching focuses on ICT literacy skills but it fails to teach an understanding of how ICT helps us to do business,” she explains. In highlighting the lack of context in which IT is being taught, Paplowska touches on one of many concerns employers have with the current state of IT education.
For Julian Box, Managing Director of Jersey-based cloud services provider Calligo, his firm’s role as a provider rather than just a user of IT means he has other problems with the curriculum. “The current ICT curriculum is boring and doesn’t inspire, so there’s a lack of take up,” he states.
But this lack of students choosing ICT isn’t the only problem from Box’s perspective. He also believes the curriculum is failing to teach a fundamental subject. “We’ve got to skill our kids with innovation. For the West to compete, innovation has to be at the heart of education,” he says.
Steve Moffatt, CTO of Front End Products at US-based Applied Materials, agrees that radical revisions need to be made to the teaching of IT, particularly with regard to the context in which it is taught. “Clearly IT education is important, but it needs to function with mathematics, science, and engineering generally. It is a part of a broader technical ecosystem. The entire infrastructure needs bolstering and strengthening in my view. This is true in most of the Western world.”
Looking at the UK system within an international framework, Paplowska confirms that the UK is not alone in having problems with its system of teaching IT. “We know that across Europe, all member states report the same problems,” she says. “There are [teaching] shortages and [skills] gaps.”
What can be done?
But not everyone is getting it wrong. Indeed, some countries are shining examples of how to teach IT effectively. Malta, for instance, began by introducing a new ICT syllabus in 1996 that was designed to help develop a digital society. The syllabus has since been backed up and extended through a number of revisions to Malta’s ‘Smart Island’ strategy (the road map for building a digital society and economy), by developing new educational institutions like Malta University’s Computer Science department and the opening of an institute of ICT at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST). Most recently, in 2010, the island saw the launch of ‘eSkills Alliance Malta’, which according to Dr John Abela, CTO of Ascent Software and a member of the executive committee of eSkills Alliance Malta, “ensures that the population and workforce in particular, get the right skills.”
Maltese success in developing a digital sector and providing the skilled people needed to help it flourish should give a boost to any jurisdiction looking to achieve similar things. As efforts in the Channel Islands to grow the currently small IT industry increase, the skills gap casts a long shadow over the potential sustainability of these efforts.
Marc Lainé is clear about the wider detrimental effect of this problem. “Employers and our clients are struggling to find decent candidates in IT at every level, and this is hurting our performance and our economy,” he says.
So what skills does the industry need? Perhaps surprisingly, people aren’t shouting for more computer science degrees. Corrado Anderson, Head of IT at Channel Island law firm Collas Crill, is worried about school leavers’ wider education. “My sense is that UK secondary schooling is good at teaching specialisation, but where I don’t think it’s as good as it could be is with generic skills. I’m finding that the basic ‘How do I approach a problem?’ skill is missing.”
This need for wider creative and problem solving skills is backed up by Julian Box. “Proper technology training should be a core subject along with creativity and innovation. There are other jurisdictions around the world giving creativity and innovation as much focus as English and Maths.”
Pleasingly for Anderson and Box, Jersey’s Assistant Minister for Education, Deputy Rod Bryans, shares their views. “My own agenda is to put creativity and innovation into the curriculum,” he says. “It’s the ability to question and flip ideas on their heads, it’s about changing styles of thinking.”
This is very easy to say but where does it start? From an industry perspective, a number of Jersey IT professionals have started a computer clubs initiative, which aims to build passion for computing as well as developing skills. Although it’s in its early stages, the initiative, led by Julian Box, is progressing well in the four schools taking part in the pilot, and the hope is to eventually roll out the project across all the islands’ schools.
Jersey and Guernsey are also both addressing their IT skills gaps. Guernsey is preparing a skills strategy and Jersey is undertaking a sector survey that will benchmark the current level of skills against the industry’s needs.
The usefulness of having a strategy is underlined by Dr Abela. “Having a strategy means you know where you want to be in three to five years’ time,” he explains. “But there is also a need for more urgent action.” The new UK curriculum is set to be introduced in 2014, and Joanna Paplowska is aware that in the meantime “children are at risk of not being taught properly”.
The ability for the islands to operate independently of the UK may put them in a better position for dealing with the problem, with Deputy Bryans seeing the islands’ independence as potentially playing an important role if the new curriculum is not up to scratch. “The nice thing about Jersey is that it has a pirate mentality and can move quickly. We’ll either adopt the new GCSE [in ICT] or create our own.” He’s also positive about the fact that the islands are not pioneers in the way that Malta has been. “When you arrive late to the party, the good thing is that you know what to bring!”
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Malta: an island transformed
Malta’s efforts at transforming its ICT education resulted in more than 600 ICT students graduating from Malta University and Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) in 2010.
Led by the belief expressed by Austin Gatt, Minister for Investment, Industry and IT, that “ICT training does not mean just another job, but a smarter job, one that will give better prospects, better pay, and better job satisfaction”, Malta has developed a lifelong learning curriculum that begins at primary school and continues throughout a Maltese citizen’s working life.
Initiatives such as ‘eSkills’ and ‘MyPotential’ promote lifelong learning in the ICT sector with enrolment being promoted through the use of incentives, such as tax credits that enable successful students to claim up to 80 per cent of the cost of a course against tax. In 2008, 1,010 people benefitted from the initiative.
Malta has also entered into a number of strategic partnerships with businesses that provide software for schools. At an early age, pupils are expected to become ‘critical and reflective users of ICT’ and are encouraged ‘to develop the appropriate social skills that are essential for co-operative and collaborative learning’, which is something that many in business feel is missing from the UK’s approach to ICT.
The Maltese approach means that people can continue learning for as long as they wish beyond school, and as Dr John Abela, a member of the executive committee of eSkills Alliance Malta, points out, the results have been positive: “We have been able to fill most of the IT jobs with graduates, so you could say we’ve been successful,” he explains.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Kirsten Morel
Quelle/Source: Businesslife, 12.10.2012
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