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

[BowdonUK]

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

The UK is heading towards a "catastrophic" digital skills shortage "disaster", a think tank has warned.

The Learning & Work Institute says the number of young people taking IT subjects at GCSE has dropped 40% since 2015.

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?

 

[BowdonUK]

When I was at school we had the BBC Micro computer, then the Apple Mac, then eventually the PC. Thinking back though, though we did BASIC programming on the BBC we never did anything on the Apple or PC computers. I think the PC had QBASIC and then Visual BASIC. But I'd left school by then.

I went on 2 courses at college, BTEC First (?), then the BTEC National. I remember the programming languages I did. I think there was a variation of BASIC on the Unix system. Then we did some Python, then COBOL, and tagged on the end was C+. A lot of people dropped off the course because C+ was seen as the most modern language at that point and it would only be taught in the last 6 weeks of a 2 year course.

During my time in the 80s and 90s computers were still considered a nerdy thing. The only non-nerds were business people using Microsoft based programs for their businesses. But in the early 2000's I think computers become mainstream. I had always thought that more people would have become involved in areas once considered 'nerdy'. But that doesn't seem to have happened. I'm always amazed with the lack of tech knowledge that a lot of the ISP customer service people have. Anyone under 40 years old should have a basic understanding of all areas of computing in my opinion.

I've never understood why there isn't more computer porgrammes on television. We had loads back in the day. Mostly based around gaming and pc/consoles. But some programmes were about solving computer problems. Yet apart from BBC Click there is nothing on tv these days like that.

I don't know if anyone follows Linus on here. But he had a video a couple of weeks ago watching this top twitch streamer trying to build his own computer. He managed to do it just about with help from his chat. I just don't understand how someone can be at the top of their game (excuse the pun ) yet know next to nothing about the tools they are using.

 

[BowdonUK]

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.

I'm not 40 (do you realise 40s means 40 to 49?). The GCSE course came soon after I left school.

Why pick a fight instead of answer the question?