Why aren't young people taking computer courses at school?

Soldato
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IT is misunderstood. When someone asks me what I do - I mean for a living - I tend to reply with just "I'm in IT". That's because my actual job title is meaningless to anyone that is not in IT themselves to understand what it entails. Therefore I just "work in IT". That response satisfies 99% of people that ask because they have no interest in knowing any more. The only people that would tend to ask for more info, are those that have experience in IT roles themselves.
People tend to still see IT as fixing computers. Oh you know about computers...can you fix my laptop? Can you tell me a good laptop or tablet to buy? Little do they know what you actually do on a day to day basis and that actually, no, you don't know what a good laptop to buy is without researching the latest ones yourself either, despite that you might work daily on highly technical things.

When my kids ask me what I actually do all day at work...I mean it is genuinely hard to explain without them getting bored within 10 seconds. I think it is this unwillingness to learn...this lack of interest or desire that really has been the death blow to IT. It's because it's all around us by now. 5 year olds using phones/tablets daily...tech is all around us and is taken for granted. As has already been said, IT is not a mystery worth learning anymore because the focus is not what these machines and technology can do, it's more about what can I consume right now and how does it give me an instant fix in delivering content. People can't really see past that. "If you've been working with computers for so many years, aren't they all fixed yet?". Genuine question raised to me. It's because IT again is seen as devices which are made to do stuff, and if they don't, they get fixed. IT is so much more obviously.

The courses at GCSE level from what I have heard of my local schools teaching my kid, are terrible. Literally how to use office apps and not a lot else. It's no wonder they don't take them. They have a very bad rep. Same as when I was at school. I think it varies a lot. The better ones are where you learn actual programming.

I like this. My dad worked for Logica and then CGI for more or less his whole career, so he was basically an IT project manager. He's alright with computers, but my knowledge exceeded his when I was about 13. That always tickled me because he was always "in IT."

Ah well :)
 

Deleted member 66701

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Deleted member 66701

Schools do not pay enough to get competent, industry trained IT professionals to enter the teaching profession, so the courses just end up being basic computer hardware, word processing, powerpoint, excel and some basic web/python coding that any numpty can teach - i.e. not really interesting or useful for an IT career.

That's the reason why computing is still one of the few subjects that still attracts a 25k bursary for teacher training - and it's still not enough!
 
Soldato
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a hangover from the last 20 years or so where there was a big push to go into IT. Everywhere i looked there were do this IT course and get a job paying £xx,xxx type ads. Maybe IT is over saturated or at least certain areas are? (I currently work in IT Infrastructure but wouldn't be surprised if dev jobs were higher in demand these days compared to the IT Support/helpdesk jobs etc.)
 
Man of Honour
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That's the reason why computing is still one of the few subjects that still attracts a 25k bursary for teacher training - and it's still not enough!
Teaching IT would genuinely interest me in the future (the salary may be an issue unless I could reduce my costs a lot though). Like many people here I have a vast amount of IT experience, being self taught from age 12 in 1981, then working in software development, testing, support, project management and various other management anbd non-management hands-on roles for several companies. That experience would probably be quite valuable. But a blocker would be the need for a degree. A quick google shows that private schools can employ teachers without degrees but you must have a degree to work in a state school. That's going to prevent many of the older, more experienced, IT people moving into teaching even if they wanted to.
 

Deleted member 66701

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Deleted member 66701

Teaching IT would genuinely interest me in the future (the salary may be an issue unless I could reduce my costs a lot though). Like many people here I have a vast amount of IT experience, being self taught from age 12 in 1981, then working in software development, testing, support, project management and various other management anbd non-management hands-on roles for several companies. That experience would probably be quite valuable. But a blocker would be the need for a degree. A quick google shows that private schools can employ teachers without degrees but you must have a degree to work in a state school. That's going to prevent many of the older, more experienced, IT people moving into teaching even if they wanted to.

There is actually no formal requirement for a degree to teach in a state school - you can do it through something like QTLS. I've known a couple of high schools that have employed ex-Army people direct (no degree).
 
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Like the OP, at my school there were no qualifications in IT, just computing classes for a short period. I can remember almost nothing about what we were supposed to learn there, I think we did a bit of basic word processing and clip art. I would've taken a computing/IT subject if it had been offered.

As for the question, my guess is because the stuff they teach in classes is likely to be because it's either:

a) Very mundane or stuff anyone with an interest would have figured out for themselves years ago. How to create a Word document yadayada.
b) Not kept up to date enough, i.e. you'd be learning how to use outdated software and techniques that will be obsolete by the time the children enter the workforce

I agree with MikeTimbers that career paths are, or at least were missing. When I was at school (admittedly in the 90s), I thought IT was literally just a computer programmer or collection of programmers creating a production system. If there was a fault they would go and fix it in situ. I didn't even know there was such a thing as BAs, Testers, PMs, different environments, project wrappers etc etc.
 
Soldato
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Code monkey of 30 odd years experience here. I have to say the majority of people I've worked with over the years have come from non-IT backgrounds and moved into it later on. Lots of maths graduates, physics and so on. I'm almost a rarity with a Computer Science degree. Didn't study it at school as it didn't exist as a subject in the 1980's.

It is a subject you can re-train to in later life, largely helped by it being fast moving. Demand for skills has almost always been for the latest shiny technology (Y2K aside), so an old lag doesn't have a massive advantage over someone new as they're both learning the new toys. Experience just helps you learn quicker as lots of "new" stuff frankly isn't that new - lots of same old **** in a different wrapper :)
 
Soldato
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... Lots of maths graduates, physics and so on. I'm almost a rarity with a Computer Science degree. Didn't study it at school as it didn't exist as a subject in the 1980's.

It is a subject you can re-train to in later life...
Yes, that's a good point. Computing, IT, coding etc is a lot easier to pick up latter in your career than maths, physics, engineering etc.
 
Soldato
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I am too old also to have studied Computers at school but did do well at Flow diagrams in maths and find them weirdly satisfying, zx81 programming at college, and did alphacam cad programming for a while as a job
 
Soldato
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Finding good people in IT these days is almost impossible. The majority are those who want to get into IT (but they don't really know why), then when they do, moan about it
 
Man of Honour
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I'm an old fart. My O level course in 1985 included writing software on punched cards and sending them to the local university to run. We got the results back a week later.
 
Soldato
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School computer courses are basically Microsoft word, excel and PowerPoint classes. There is rarely anything transferable to the real world or interesting enough to keep their attention.

Add into that most of the youth being more aware of mobile operating systems rather than Windows. When I was at school, most people atleast had a laptop or desktop PC. Nowadays it's tablets and phones.

It appears to be becoming quite a niche area.
No no no. Wrong wrong wrong.
 
Soldato
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I think there are many reasons for it:

1) Too many distractions.
Back in my day (1981) when I got my VIC20 there were very few games around. If I wanted to do something with it then I had to program it myself. There was no internet and all I had to rely on was the manual which came with it and occasional computer magazines. It taught me a hell of a lot. Nowadays it's too easy to simply load up a AAA game instead.

2) No understanding about the different arms of "IT".
Fixing a computer is completely different to writing software or managing a cluster of servers, etc. We need better education on what the different aspects of IT are.

3) Short termism.
This country is obsessed with picking the cheapest way of doing something and not building for the future. Companies, and the government, would rather employ someone overseas than build up the UK's actual skillbase. A friend started a software company and couldn't find suitable trainees so he had to start poaching other companies staff instead. I guess he'd just perpetuating the problem too.

4) IT (all areas) has been commoditised.
IT is no longer seen as valuable. A few decades ago it gave a company a competitive advantage. Nowadays it's seen as an undesirable cost (which then leads to point 3).

My son has chosen IT as one of his GCSE's but until now his school considers IT to be using office productivity software. It's only in his first year of GCSE that he'll actually start to learn to program in school.
There is no GCSE IT course.

You have a vocational BTEC in IT or a GCSE in Computer Science.

Both vastly different courses. Their different subjects.
 
Soldato
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I think there are many reasons for it:

1) Too many distractions.
Back in my day (1981) when I got my VIC20 there were very few games around. If I wanted to do something with it then I had to program it myself. There was no internet and all I had to rely on was the manual which came with it and occasional computer magazines. It taught me a hell of a lot. Nowadays it's too easy to simply load up a AAA game instead.

2) No understanding about the different arms of "IT".
Fixing a computer is completely different to writing software or managing a cluster of servers, etc. We need better education on what the different aspects of IT are.

3) Short termism.
This country is obsessed with picking the cheapest way of doing something and not building for the future. Companies, and the government, would rather employ someone overseas than build up the UK's actual skillbase. A friend started a software company and couldn't find suitable trainees so he had to start poaching other companies staff instead. I guess he'd just perpetuating the problem too.

4) IT (all areas) has been commoditised.
IT is no longer seen as valuable. A few decades ago it gave a company a competitive advantage. Nowadays it's seen as an undesirable cost (which then leads to point 3).

My son has chosen IT as one of his GCSE's but until now his school considers IT to be using office productivity software. It's only in his first year of GCSE that he'll actually start to learn to program in school.
There is no GCSE IT course.

You have a vocational BTEC in IT or a GCSE in Computer Science.

Both vastly different courses. Their different subjects.
 
Soldato
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IT is misunderstood. When someone asks me what I do - I mean for a living - I tend to reply with just "I'm in IT". That's because my actual job title is meaningless to anyone that is not in IT themselves to understand what it entails. Therefore I just "work in IT". That response satisfies 99% of people that ask because they have no interest in knowing any more. The only people that would tend to ask for more info, are those that have experience in IT roles themselves.

To be honest most people simply don't know what its about I would just nod my head sagely and leave it at that. Not so much lack of interest as lack of any handle on the concept does it mean programming, software design, networking, who knows what else? I honestly don't know and wouldn't know how to relate.

I remember when the whole "IT" thing came out first it was computing classes and yep, you could get a handle on that but then it all became "IT" which is such a catchall phrase that means everything and nothing, it sounds important but no-one outside of the fraternity has a clue and I think its very opaqueness is part of the problem.
 
Soldato
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I was browsing around the BBC site earlier today and noticed this story;

UK 'heading towards digital skills shortage disaster'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56479304



I'm in my 40s these days and when I was at school we didn't have the opportunity to take IT subjects at GCSE level. We had computer classes. But never a recognised course. If there had been a course at GCSE level open to me I'd have done it.

So can the younger folks explain why students aren't taking these IT based GCSE subjects these days? How come the take up rate is low?

I'm 40 too, and I can say with 100% certainty that we had the opportunity to do a GCSE in IT.

I didn't go to a grammar school or anything other than a plain old run of the mill school. Your statement isn't true. If anything, we went to school at the height of the internet revolution.
 
Associate
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As a software engineer, there is no shortage of skills when the economy is contracting ;).

It's going to get even worse if people start sitting in offices again when the cabal adhock "IT guys" maintaining the new wave of company VPN's aren't necessary any more.
 
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