Computer Industry Recruitment Failures 5. Education
Right, in tackling the perceived problem of a lack of computing skills, let’s have a look at education.
Now, when I write this section, we must be careful, you and I. It is not necessarily the aim of education to turn out computing professionals. It is not the aim of education to provide fully‐functional computer programmers for the computing industry (though industry agitators may think so). Throughout this section, we must bear this in mind.
The lost generations
Secondary education
When I studied computer science at school I studied punched‐card input. Didn’t get to use it, as the Personal Computer arrived and the world changed. But this gives a block of the syllabus at the time. A set of concepts; flowcharts, punch tape, a snippet of coding in BASIC etc.
This is teaching with aims in mind. Those who went on to use computing would likely encounter these ideas again—a three stroke sketch of vocational training. For those who never encountered a computer again—and at the time that expectation would have been most people—the course gave the basics of logical reasoning and analysis. A teaching aim of autonomous thinking. May be vaguely applicable other places, good to instil.
Looking at the syllabus some way back towards the Millennium, it concentrated on teaching word processing or something. This is a teaching aim of commercial training. This was reflected in other more vocationally‐based and Further Education training.
Well, go on, argue with me. Some Examining Boards clearly felt differently, as at least one published an experimental syllabus. I got a quick look at these: ‘Name the parts of a computer’; memory, CPU, and so forth. Not what I would have done, but a big improvement. Then, the entire syllabus was suspended—2013 or something. Pending review? The government made a statement about how children should be taught computer coding. I’ll come to that later. The teaching profession, already aggrieved at working conditions, openly complained to the government—how on earth were they to teach computing when none of them knew computing?
In the year 2014–2015 the new syllabus arrived. Now children are taught what an ‘algorithm’ is, and ‘algorithm’ may well become the next celebrity word [well, the word ‘algorithm’ has become a celebrity word R.C.]
I can’t tell you much beyond what I’ve seen occasionally on the news. I’m going to have some to say about these attitudes later. What I can tell you is the quality of output.
I’ll tell you that secondary computer education in the 1990’s must have been bunk. English students, and I mean England‐the‐nation, who arrived from secondary education into Universities had demonstrably lower skills in computing than students from most other countries. And having a slightly better level of computing than a Nigerian student is a tribute to the resourcefulness of Nigerian students, not the success of English education.
Specifics? An English student believes that by pressing ‘Save’ you save your work. Then complains when it fails.
University/college education
I assume that most students who pursue computing get pushed, as all‐times, through computer courses based round coding. And I assume these courses keep, and will keep, some notion of a general educational aim. I gently slide past some of the students I’ve met, count off as youthful enthusiasm. There does seem to be a lack of round understanding. But then, this is the climate. And I did study electronics too, so my perspective is slewed.
Educational aims
It is at this point that the difference between ‘England lacking computer programmers’, and ‘England lacking computing personnel’, becomes a crossroads. Look, if you are training for ’computer personnel’ then you should not, in the first place, be training to code. That’s only part of it. Learning Regex is as important as learning to code (indeed, learning Regex may not be a bad idea for a lot of people—no, I wouldn’t teach directly). Learning how to use a search engine is pretty central, but most students arrive at university without any grounding. In an odd twist, the University Library usually gets to do this training—but then, library skills are transferable.
Output
It’s pretty clear, to me anyway, that secondary education computer training has failed maybe two generations of people. Likely focussed on commercial imperatives, rather than through‐thought, it skills the user for a word processor, scares them off a spreadsheet, and leaves them thinking a database is Microsoft Access. And they don’t know what a file is, or how to search. Thus failing general educational aims. England, a country with one of the largest debts in the world, has plainly not spent it’s borrowing on computer education.
As for university output, it’s a fair bit better. But they turn out students who do not know what a ‘style’ is in a word processor. Or can figure out why a picture falls to the side of a document. So universities have no cause to stand on their rostrum.
Targeted output
As for the need for computing students, what are we talking about here? You see, University places in England, to some extent, used to be funded, and so allocated, by need. This all changed to a so‐called free‐market of ‘customer choice’. The result has been, as might be predicted, a lot of solicitors, and shortages of chemists, biologists, engineers, computer personnel—scientists of all kinds.
Currently…
The new syllabus, all the way from Primary through Secondary education, looks good. We seem to be back to regarding teaching non‐vocational education as a skill exercise.And the coverage; learn programming and reasoning, network concepts, use search, and be responsible, is a massive step forward. Could take 7 years to start working through, and doesn’t address the lost generations, but it’s a start.
Put your pen down
This has been a brief, impressionistic, opinionated sketch of the state of, and state policy in, computing education. I may or may not be right.
What I can tell you is, my personal and unfounded impression, that England is very poorly educated in computing. All round. And massively increased standards in secondary schools have driven computing education quality very, very low. And that current higher education recruitment policy has likely starved the country of qualified graduates.
What I can not tell you is if this claim of ‘a shortage of computing personnel’ is due to a shortage of graduates. There may yet be other reasons.
Onwards, Next