Technology has been the source of great innovation for decades, and it continues to change all aspects of our everyday lives: from health and transport; through cyber security and food production; to the world of arts; the laboratories of scientists and even the academic classrooms of students and teachers.
The added importance and central position of technology in our daily lives is perhaps not surprisingly filtering down into education. The August school exam results demonstrated the significant increase in the number of students taking STEM A-levels, seeing an increase of more than 38,000 since 2010. Similarly, university computer sciences applications are up a staggering 13 per cent to 97,110 – the greatest percentage increase among the other top ten most studied subjects. This is good news for British businesses. As more students gain strong A-level and post-graduate results in STEM subjects, there is a greater opportunity to bring scientific, statistical and data analytics skills into businesses in the future. Allowing us to build today’s workforce with a view towards the business demands of the future. But it’s not just the typical academic paths that are seeing growth in terms of tech take up – so too is the apprenticeship route. With escalating costs of higher education and a general wider acceptance that traditional means of academia are not always the best fit, the groundswell (around work in general, but technology in particular), is building here too.
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However, whilst here in the UK we are relatively strong, such a demand for digital transformation within all industries has naturally created an unprecedented requirement for skills, such as coding, developing, computer and data scientists and everything else digital.
With the tech workforce predicted to grow by nearly 40 per cent by 2030, and nearly 750,000 additional workers required by 2017 alone, the challenge is clear to see for all. There is excellent work being done in education and training to meet this demand, and its continuation and expansion will be key to maintaining the competitiveness of the UK digital sector and the economy as a whole. It’s therefore important that we as a nation, as well as individual businesses, look to build on the momentum, and acknowledge that alternative paths to traditional university education are available. For some of the most creative and innovative young minds the traditional paths of education aren’t always the most attractive, or best fit. It’s important that students are aware of the full range of opportunities available to once they leave school.Share this story