The kids aren't all right: Fall in GCSE compsci students is bad news for employers and Britain's future growth plans
- Reference: 1616491808
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/23/gcse_computer_science/
- Source link:
The [1]report [PDF] highlighted a steady decline in the number of Computing and IT students at GCSE level since 2015, falling 40 per cent from a peak of 147,000 to just 88,000 last year.
[2]
The drop was attributed to the government's attempt to phase out the old ICT GCSE, which was regarded as a "insufficiently rigorous," and [3]focused primarily on Office-related skills rather than those most useful for a job in tech, such as programming.
Although fewer than 10,000 students were subscribed to a GCSE ICT class in 2020 (less than a tenth of its 2015 figure), the number of students enrolled in a [4]Computer Science GCSE course hasn't kept up either.
[5]
Things were relatively better with respect to A Levels, with the decline between 2015 and 2020 measuring five per cent. This reasonably steady trajectory was maintained while ICT courses are gradually displaced by those in Computer Science. Additionally, the number of students studying digital-related apprenticeships grew by 4.9 per cent between the 2017/2018 and 2020/2021 academic years, but still made up only around 5 per cent of apprenticeship starts.
The report also identified encouraging numbers of students studying Computer Science at an undergraduate and postgraduate level, with respective growth of 17 and 55 per cent in the years between 2014/2015 and 2018/2019. Although not mentioned in the paper, the surge in postgraduate participation was a likely consequence of government financing introduced in 2016.
Why did Johnny and Jenny's exam grades yo-yo over the summer? Here's some of the code behind UK results chaos [6]READ MORE
WorldSkills UK said it is concerned that the declining or stagnating numbers of people studying IT-related courses at secondary and tertiary levels will result in a skills shortage, with 92 per cent of employers surveyed placing an importance on "a basic level of digital skills," and 80 per cent of employers having roles that require "advanced digital skills".
Although a majority – 70 per cent – of young people surveyed in the report said they expect their employers to invest in their digital skills, just 47 per cent of workforces said they offered on-the-job training.
Additionally, some employers surveyed by WorldSkills UK as part of a focus group raised concerns with obsolescence in the curriculum, course content outdated by the time students enter the work market.
"You look at some of those qualifications, they haven't been updated for eight years, and tech's moving on rapidly," one training provider interviewed for the report told World Skills UK.
Addressing this problem requires a rigorous review of the root causes, including gender and geographic inequality, as well as "digital poverty", the think tank said.
At all education levels, girls are less likely to study ICT or Computer Science than boys. Last year 23 per cent of Computer Science or ICT GCSE entrants were female, and only 17 per cent carried on at A Level. In higher education, women made up only 16 per cent of tech undergraduates in 2018/19 and 30 per cent of postgraduates.
Additionally, WorldSkills UK argued that more should be done to ensure that every student has access to broadband and a sufficiently capable computer, which it argued was crucial to "economic competitiveness and to social justice."
The demand for digital skills is not only impacting technology businesses, said Phil Boden, division manager at global HR consultancy Robert Half UK, "across the board demand for digital skills is rising.
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In the last year, the number of job adverts for Advertising and PR managers with software configuration skills has gone up by 208 per cent," he said. "Today, being digitally literate is just as important as maths or science, yet it’s still seen as optional by most students and so the government needs to be looking at revamping IT GCSEs and other junior qualifications, and making them mandatory until school leaving age.” ®
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[1] https://www.worldskillsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Disconnected-Report-final.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YFnKT7M3f@9bU0cZzk0p9wAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2011/04/21/bin_ict_classes/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/19/gcse_computing_fails_to_boost_numbers/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YFnKT7M3f@9bU0cZzk0p9wAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/14/ofqual_source/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YFnKT7M3f@9bU0cZzk0p9wAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
In other words Office 365 is not the same as Python or C++
Now could someone tell my project manager this?
Service industries want drones that can drive their web apps made offshore; so the primary skills they demand are keyboard, mouse, word processing and maybe a spreadsheet or little databasing. GCSE-level basic office stuff - fine, everyone needs that. Basic compsci/programming? That's little more than a bit of fun, if it's your definition of fun. It was for me, and I didn't need no stinking school to teach it. Typing in programs from the ZX Spectrum+ user manual...
Kids aren't dumb (mostly); and IT-specific jobs in the UK are relatively poorly paid unless you get to the top. In which case, the most useful skills are in sales and marketing, not CompSci. Not like the good old days when an Oracle "consultant" could cobble together any old database for 100k/year. Those days aren't coming back, thanks to offshore competition taking over that work; unless companies wake up to the terrible deal they are dealt over and over with the hidden ongoing costs that hiring one of the usual consultancies incurs.
So why would you pick a course that's relatively hard and has little to zero prospects without doing a higher level course. Ultimately, your time is probably more valuable learning maths and science with a later view to specialising in CompSci if that's your thing at KS4+. You don't need CompSci GSCE to move to A-level or a degree.
I made the mistake of doing far too many GCSEs (13!) the result of which was dilution and disinterest. Fewer, but well taught general skills leading to specialisations at high levels is what I'd recommend to anyone today. No reasons that a Maths course shouldn't contain simple programming for example.
Blah blah offshoring
Offshoring is competition in lots of business areas - that's why it's called business process outsourcing. It's not the end of the world and you can compete.
But software development - why wouldn't you? With zero raw materials other than a computer you can, at your own pace and at a location of your choosing, build products which can be sold worldwide. You can be your own boss! The only other field I can think of that offers this is being an author, and there are a lot of similarities. But think. Don't do shitty webapps at £50/pop, someone in India can do that cheaper.
Find an itch, scratch it. If enough other people have that itch, you can commercialise it. Open source if you want but make damn sure you can charge businesses for what you do. It's a big help if you can find an area that is deeply unsexy but widely used. Forget trendy webapps - you want to be doing something with email - remember email? - or making pretty webpages from Excel spreadsheets. That sort of thing. But make something . Sell a product, not a service, because you can sell a product more than once.
Re: Blah blah offshoring
Another great advantage is that once you've made your thing,
You dont have to make more of them sell to each customer! brilliant!
Take that Henry Ford!
...another similarity to being an author, which is probably the only other trade with that perk.
Re: Blah blah offshoring
Find an itch, scratch it. If enough other people have that itch, you can commercialise it.
And that, of course, is the hard part.
What you probably meant to say is that if enough people have that itch, and are willing to pay an economic amount for it to be scratched, and there is not another fifty products out there that do that already, then you might be able to commercialise it.
Generally speaking, if no-one is making money out of it already, there may be a reason other than no-one has thought of it.
"You don't need CompSci GSCE to move to A-level or a degree."
It might be useful to figure out if thats the sort of thing you want to do though
Teaching principle versus implementation
The biggest problem in education is the lack of focus on the generic nature of the computer. It is a tool .There are few simple principles and models how modern computing works and how we use it. And, that is independent of the actual program used. However, most of the teaching is focused on very specific (and often outdated) programs and systems. Instead we should be teaching the program-independent skills
Imagine a Math-class that will only teach the addition of two numbers, when those numbers are odd. Here we have learned (*) to teach the idea and principle behind the addition, such that you can plug in any number and arrive at the correct result. I don't care which word-processor you use. They all have some basic principles they adhere to. Yes, there are advantages and drawbacks for each. I don't care which programming language (**) you use. It does not matter what you use when you know how things work (to the extend of the educational level). When you know the principle, then you can cope with the continual and fast changes in the IT sector without much of a problem.
(*) At least, we used to have learned to teach generic math. But it seems to be too much an effort for most in these days.
(**) For a very broad definition of "programming language".
Re: Teaching principle versus implementation
This is a microcosm of the problems with education: They teach children to pass an exam, not to learn.
My partner used to be a teacher and her pay was directly related to the exam results of her students. So she had to prioritize the "passing the exam" rather than "educating"
The NHS is another excellent example of targets causing the institutions to miss the point.
Reasons for the fall in GCSE compsci students?
Not a bit surprised school level "Comp Sci" take-up is declining . It's quite rightly got a bad name. As taught, it's superficial and uninteresting in addition to which it doesn't really equip anyone to do anything useful in the real world. Like the majority of mainstream education, it's essentially just a sausage machine stuffing in a bunch of factoids to be regurgitated at exam time. Understanding is not expected or required.
As an example of how seriously the benefit to pupils is taken, a highly experienced IT colleague who trained to teach "Comp Sci" was sent out as part of his training to "teach" things he'd read up for the first time the previous evening. Not surprisingly, he quit.
and focused primarily on Office-related skills rather than those most useful for a job in tech, such as programming.
so there wasnt a "computer studies" GCSE ???
just a "how to use Microsoft Office in your non IT related job" class ?
People still dont seem to have grasped the difference between programming a computer and using a computer - and the fact that using a computer is something eveyone should learn how to do, like driving a car.
with 92 per cent of employers surveyed placing an importance on "a basic level of digital skills," and 80 per cent of employers having roles that require "advanced digital skills".
Again - worthless survey as thay have not made the programming/using distinction and the question the employers have ended up answering is "do you need your employees to know how to use microsoft office"
and apparently 92% do , with 80% requiring them to know how to do additional hacking like "sending an email" or "doing a pivot table in excel"
Have they considered paying more for IT?
I truly don't understand why IT salaries are so low in UK compared to other countries
this one is an easy answer
The old course was an easy pass for students as it was mainly coursework.
The new one has some coursework but the vast majority of it is an exam at the end.
And for those who took it in the early years - a lot of students where were expected to do well did badly because of the exams.
Hence schools now steer students in a different direction.