Tag Archives: skills gap

Skilling up: the case for digital literacy

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As technology has advanced, and it has become harder to name simple tasks that have not become digitised in some form, the need for everyone in society to have a basic level of digital skills has markedly increased. From applying for jobs to ordering a coffee via an app, digital technology has undoubtedly changed the way we all go about our day-to-day lives. For those with the appropriate digital skillset, these advances may be viewed as a positive transition to more efficiently operated services. However, for those without the necessary digital skills, there is a risk that they will struggle to access even the most basic of essential services, such as opening a bank account.

Therefore, it is of no surprise that the issue of the digital skills gap is a concern for governments and businesses alike, with a recent report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee highlighting that the UK could be missing out on £63 billion in lost GDP each year, due to a general lack of digital skills.

The issue of the digital skills gap has never been more pronounced, as a result of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, where various restrictions have required us all to embrace digital technology, in order to work, learn and socialise with our friends and family.

Digital skills at work

The extent to which technology has changed the world of work cannot be overstated, with a recent CBI report stating that the UK is the midst of a fourth industrial revolution, spurred on by advancements in automation, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Research conducted by the CBI found that 57% of businesses say that they will need significantly more digital skills in the next five years. Therefore, the workforce of the future will need to be supported to gain these digital skills, in order to gain employment and enable British business to benefit from the digital revolution.

Concerns have been raised regarding the ability of young people to access opportunities that will support them in developing transferable digital skills. Grasping key digital skills, such as the ability to navigate Microsoft Office, is undoubtedly necessary, but is no longer enough to meet the needs of employers.  

Digital literacy: the bedrock for a fourth industrial revolution

The ability to not just be able to use digital technology, but to truly understand how it works, is known as digital literacy. A report from the House of Commons Education Select Committee sets out how crucial digital literacy will be to the success of the fourth industrial revolution. The speed with which technology is advancing and changing ensures that within just a few years, digital platforms that we use today may become outdated. Therefore, it is unwise to focus on using a single platform when developing digital skills, as inevitably the platform will either gain new functionalities or become obsolete. Instead, digital skills should be developed in a way that ensures they are future-proofed and will not go to waste when the inescapable next big technological or societal change occurs.

Why do we need digital literacy?

An example of why digital literacy is important can be seen in the way in which many of us have adapted to work from home, as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions on face-to-face meetings forced us to consider new ways to work collaboratively and explore the myriad of platforms that facilitate video-calling, file sharing and instant messaging. Whilst we may have already had experience using existing video-conferencing platforms, such as Skype, it was clear that each organisation had to consider using new software, such as Zoom and Google Hangouts.

Many of us would never have used these software packages before and were expected to rapidly get to grips with it in real-time, and without the usual in-person back-up networks of colleagues and IT support. This highlights the importance of digital literacy: the ability to take insight gained from interacting with one digital platform and apply it to another was vital for business continuity during the initial lockdown. The ability to transfer knowledge gained from one platform to another, is vital to ensure that we harness the opportunities of digital advancements as they occur, and without the need for lengthy additional training.

Developing digital literacy

Developing digital literacy can be difficult. Research conducted by the Nuffield Foundation found that providing access to computers in schools was not enough to encourage the development of digital literacy. Instead, FutureLab advises that computers should be embedded and used across the curriculum. Ideas put forward within FutureLab’s Digital Literacy handbook, include:

  • Support children to make mistakes when using technology, allow them to create content that may not be to the high-standard we would expect and enable them to consider how they can improve the quality of their output.
  • Provide opportunities for children to work collaboratively online, e.g create a wiki or real-time document creation via Google Docs. Use this experience to highlight how anyone can make changes online, and develop critical understanding of how what we see online may not always be entirely trustworthy.
  • Harness the power of technology by going beyond the basics. Most children will be able to conduct a simple online search, then highlight ways this can be improved and advanced through Boolean search terms. Incorporate this into a lesson that discusses the value of critically assessing the value of information.

Final thoughts

Since the widespread adoption of the internet, the way we use technology has changed at an almost frightening pace. Therefore, the digital skills we all need to interact with technology must keep up if we are to truly harness the power and potential of these new advancements.

Ensuring that we are all digitally literate will enable us to take advantage of new digital platforms effectively and could potentially lead to future economic prosperity. Developing digital literacy, will not be easy, but it will be vital to ensure the future workforce have the skills they need to gain employment and play their part within the fourth industrial revolution.

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‘Think globally, act locally’ – local job creation

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By Heather Cameron

The Local Government Association (LGA) last week called for greater devolution of employment and skills funding to councils and a ‘radical rethink’ of the way Jobcentre Plus works. Chairman of the LGA’s People and Places Board said:

“Job centres need to engage with more unemployed people for a start and then help more claimants move into sustainable employment. This is crucial to boosting local growth. Councils know best how to do this. We know our local economies, we know our local employers and we know our residents and we can bring local services together in a way central government will never be able to.”

Local solutions

Of course, local solutions for job creation and economic growth is not a new idea. Local development and job creation initiatives first emerged in the 1980s, in response to a ‘new phenomenon of high, persistent and concentrated unemployment’ that national policies seemed powerless to reverse on their own. Since then they have continued to spread and develop.

Although unemployment is at an 11-year low in the UK, according to recent research many countries, including the UK, are seeing widening gaps in the geographic distribution of skills and jobs. And the importance of local solutions has again been highlighted.

The OECD’s most recent edition of Job Creation and Local Economic Development argues that local development is a key tool for addressing the problem of such unequal distribution. Similarly, in its submission to last year’s Autumn Statement, the LGA argued that local government is central to the delivery of locally tailored solutions to national public policy challenges.

Boosting productivity growth, while ensuring growth delivers improved living standards and distributes the benefits of increased prosperity equally, are highlighted by the OECD as the twin challenges facing all policymakers. Underlined as a crucial but difficult task, it is argued that ‘actions originating at any single governance level or policy area will not be sufficient’.

Whole-of-government approach

The OECD report, therefore, examines how national and local actors can better work together to support economic development and job creation at the local level. In particular, it outlines what both national and local actors can do to improve the local implementation of vocational education and training (VET) and SME and entrepreneurship policies.

Among the recommendations for national actors include:

  • Design VET frameworks that allow local stakeholders to tailor training to local labour market needs while still maintaining a certain level of national consistency
  • Build the capacities needed to make VET systems more agile locally
  • Develop a strong national apprenticeship framework that builds a high quality system, includes strategically-designed incentives for employer participation, and allows for flexible delivery frameworks
  • Maximise the efficiency of SME and entrepreneurship policy delivery by allowing for local tailoring, co-locating services, using intermediary organisations to deliver programmes, and/or developing formal agreements for the division of competences and financing between governance levels
  • Develop national frameworks and strategies to support disadvantaged young people in entrepreneurship, and clearly assign responsibility for this policy portfolio to a single agency or ministry
  • Embed entrepreneurship into national education frameworks, while also providing integrated packages of entrepreneurship support in other settings to reach young people outside of the education system

Among the recommendations for local actors include:

  • Balance the need to meet pressing local labour market demands with ensuring that VET helps to move local economies to higher skilled and value-added products and services
  • Encourage VET teachers and trainers to maintain contact with local employers and industries to keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date
  • Boost employer engagement in apprenticeships
  • Tailor the delivery of apprenticeship programmes so that they work better for a broader range of employers, including SMEs, and disadvantaged populations
  • Forge connections across administrative borders in developing and co-ordinating entrepreneurship and SME policies
  • Work with organisations that have already established relationships with disadvantaged youth to maximise the reach of entrepreneurship programmes
  • To better reach disadvantaged youth, provide integrated packages of support, use hands-on learning methods, and involve entrepreneurs in programme delivery

Decentralisation?

The report concludes that local actors need both flexibility to tailor delivery of national policies to local conditions and the capacity to use this flexibility to ensure informed decision-making.

It is noted that this doesn’t necessarily mean political decentralisation, but rather ensuring the right tools are used to add local flexibility while maintaining national coherence.

If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our previous blog on Local Enterprise Partnerships. 

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The myth of the digital native? Young people, education and digital participation in Scotland

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Digital participation has been high on Scotland’s political agenda of late. Connectivity featured as a key pledge during the SNP spring conference in March. Meanwhile, both Scotland’s Digital Participation Charter and the UK government digital strategy are looking to engage those people who don’t have access to, or who do not feel confident using, technology.

Increasingly, the focus is on young people, many of whom do not remember life without internet access or mobile phones. The term being used for such young consumers of technology is “digital natives” – a digitally proficient generation which is more reliant on digital technology than older generations.

However, while in some areas of Scotland more than 80% of young people now have access to a tablet or a smartphone, their depiction as a “digital generation” may not be as accurate as first thought.

Digital competence isn’t inevitable

Some academics have challenged the notion of a “digital native”, observing that children only become digitally active if they are exposed to digital media from a young age. While a lot of research has been conducted around the impact of digital technology on those who have access, for example understanding how it effects family dynamics or health and wellbeing, less is known about the impact of not having exposure to digital technology.

This is something which needs to be explored further, and highlights that the term “universal digital native” is misleading. For example, in many areas of Scotland 17% of the population have no internet access.

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Image by Intel Free Press via Creative Commons

School-based initiatives to improve digital exposure and digital literacy

Research into digitally excluded children emphasises the important role of education on children’s digital development. School could potentially be the only opportunity for some children to receive guided exposure to the digital world, highlighting the importance of integrating digital literacy into the wider curriculum.

Individual schools have their own schemes to promote digital literacy. However, some barriers are holding children back from harnessing their potential, including:

  • allotted Information and Communications Technology (ICT) slots
  • teachers who are reluctant to teach extensively with ICT because of gaps in their own digital skills
  • concerns about exposing children to potentially harmful material.

Secondary schools in Inverclyde have trialled a ‘bring your own device’ scheme, where children use their own digital devices in lessons. Initially, there were concerns about the potential exclusion of those children who did not have their own computing devices, and about personal information being transferred across shared school networks. However, steps were taken to ensure a stock of school devices were available for those children who were unable to bring a device, that networks were secure, and that strict rules regarding the use of the technology were enforced.

Children were encouraged to work in pairs or groups to help with communication, partnership working and sharing of knowledge, which also reduced the number of personal devices in use. The scheme is still in its infancy, but already it has enabled digital technologies to be incorporated into many aspects of the Curriculum for Excellence, including: internet research, app design, online learning games and tools, photography and recording of voice notes.

UK- wide rollout of coding scheme

At a UK level, children in year 7 in England and Wales, S1 in Scotland and year 8 in Northern Ireland (aged 12) are being given the opportunity to learn how to code through a scheme rolled out by the BBC in partnership with 29 other key organisations, including Microsoft, Samsung and Barclays. The BBC Micro: Bit initiative provides children with a pocket sized computer which they can code to bring digital ideas to life. The computers are compatible with other devices, such as the Raspberry Pi, and so can be used as a springboard to more complex coding and computer programming.

The computer provision is supported by online learning resources, which teach coding techniques and give ideas about the sort of actions children can code their Micro: Bit to complete. It’s hoped that the initiative will inspire more young people to study computer science at degree level.

Implications of the digital native for education

It is clear that the education system needs to adapt to incorporate digital practice into everyday teaching. However, this has generated some debate surrounding the implications for education of the ‘digital native’ concept: how can you teach a child if they are (or are perceived to be) more proficient than their teacher? How do you integrate new technology into teaching if the teacher and pupil are learning about it at the same time?

However, failure to tackle the issues of integrating “digital” successfully into the curriculum, and digital exclusion in schools and at home could also have serious implications. If a significant portion of the next generation is digitally excluded this potentially puts them at a significant disadvantage in terms of employment and further education.

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London’s digital skills shortage: a priority for the new Mayor

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By Steven McGinty

London’s tech industry has become one of the key drivers of growth in the capital. Within the first  nine months of 2015 the industry raised approximately £1.1 billion; a substantial increase on the £911 million raised throughout 2014. Over the next 10 years, Oxford Economics research expects the sector to grow at a rate of 5.1% per year and to generate an extra £12 billion of economic activity. It’s predicted that this will create an additional 46,000 digital jobs.

However, the growth in London’s tech industry is not guaranteed. Although current London Mayor Boris Johnson claims there are more professional developers in London than in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, a recent CBI/KPMG London Business Survey indicates that there is still a shortage of skilled professionals.

Jess Tyrrell, Associate Director for the Centre for London and Director of the Connecting Tech City Programme, explains that “the skills shortage has grown from an ‘issue’ to a ‘crisis”. She warns that unless London can develop its talent pipeline, its digital potential may never be realised.

London Mayoral election

With so much at stake, it’s not surprising that the tech industry has become an issue in London’s mayoral election. One of the front runners, Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, has promised that he’ll appoint a chief digital officer (CDO) to manage the city’s data and introduce a £1m “Mayor’s Tech Challenge” to encourage innovation. He has also voiced concerns at losing young tech professionals because of the cost of housing.

Labour MP Sadiq Khan (reported by YouGov to be currently leading the race) recently met with leaders of the industry body Tech UK. The organisation noted that Mr Khan was particularly interested in tackling the skills shortage and looking at how young Londoners could be better represented in the tech industry.

The Mayoral Manifesto for the Digital Economy

At the end of last year, the London Assembly Economy Committee published a manifesto identifying the main three challenges that the Mayor should seek to address. These were:

  • poor broadband connectivity for London businesses
  • a lack of gender and socio-economic diversity in the digital labour market
  • the significant shortage of skilled workers

The first challenge is self-evident. For a digital economy to be successful, it must be built on fast, reliable, access to broadband. Perhaps more interesting is the relationship between improving diversity and the skills shortage. Most notably, there is a strong argument that encouraging non-traditional groups – i.e. those who are not white, male and middle class – will help reduce the skills shortage.

Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of the lastminute.com (and an advisor to the UK government on rolling out broadband and digital services) is in favour of increasing diversity and believes that unemployed women should be trained to help address this skills crisis. In an article for the Financial Times, she states that:

“Any company – or, more boldy, country – that dramatically improves its tech diversity will have enormous competitive advantage.”

The Committee’s manifesto also makes a number of recommendations for the new Mayor. For example, it suggests that tech apprenticeships should be designed to give disadvantaged Londoners the best possible training, and that the Mayor could endorse the industry-led TechTalent Charter, which aims to increase gender diversity in the tech industry.

London’s Digital Future: The Mayoral Tech Manifesto 2016

In January, Tech UK, the Centre for London, and the Tech London advocates released their manifesto for the future London Mayor. Ben Rogers, Director of the Centre for London, states that:

“The responsibility of the next Mayor is to ensure that London gets the best of the digital revolution.”

Like the London Assembly’s report, the Tech Manifesto focuses on the current skills shortage, noting that 93% of tech firms believe the skills gap is having a direct negative impact on their business.

The manifesto argues that London must do more to mend its fractured talent pipeline. One suggestion put forward is to establish a Digital Apprenticeship Task Force within the first 100 days of the new Mayor’s term of office. Its purpose would be to improve the quality and quantity of higher and degree-level apprenticeships. The next Mayor, say the authors of the manifesto, should work with the tech sector to ensure that the apprenticeships are fit-for-purpose, and should be particularly focused on areas where demand for skills is greatest.

With the EU referendum on the horizon, it’s also interesting to note the emphasis on tech companies having the freedom to recruit talent from across the globe. The manifesto recommends that the next Mayor should be an advocate for providing clear routes for migrant workers under the Tier 2 skilled worker visa, and oppose any restrictions. It also suggests that the Mayor should work with London universities to investigate the possibility of a trial of the Post-Study Work Visa for occupations where there is a clear skills shortage.

Final thoughts

The shortage of tech skills is a global problem. However, it’s a challenge that London must address if its digital economy is to avoid a slowdown. A key priority for the next Mayor of London should be to develop the tech industry’s talent pipeline. In practical terms, this is likely to involve protecting the industry’s access to skilled migrant workers, to ensure London’s growth in the short term, alongside investing in London’s diverse population and encouraging the best and the brightest to seek out exciting tech careers.

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Further reading: if you liked this blog post, you might also want to read our other articles on the digital sector.