The Digital Skills Gap - a major opportunity for social mobility?

The chronic digital skills shortage in the UK and around the world presents a unique opportunity for radical social change... if we have the imagination to embrace it. We'd love to hear from teachers, universities and HR leads in companies hiring tech talent for your thoughts on what we could do together.

The next few years pose a huge opportunity for us to do something really very significant to use the shake-up of the fourth industrial revolution to drive social mobility. But this won't happen unless we're deliberate about it, and act soon.

The great scandal of the English education system (though many other systems share this characteristic) is that the biggest driver of outcomes for a young person is their parents' income. Essentially, rich kids do better at school and poor kids get left behind. We know this doesn't *have* to be the case - there are many examples of schools and areas bucking the trend - and yet, we struggle to identify a systemic change that will work.

Having grappled with this problem for over a decade - as a classroom teacher trying to offer careers advice to the brilliant but confused kids in my class, as Teach First President looking at the scale of the challenge nationally, and leading a charity training headteachers across the country - it's been thrilling to move into the world of start-ups and identify a glimmer of an opportunity. Far from being a problem to solve, young people from a disadvantaged background could be the solution to another problem - the chronic shortage of digital skills in the UK.

1: There's a shortage of digital skills

The shortage of digital skills (coding, data analytics, cyber security etc) are costing the UK economy ￡63bn per year in lost GDP. Major firms describe the acute challenge of recruiting tech talent to drive the automation of their processes, step up their capacity for understanding their own business, and more effectively meet the needs of their customers. All of these are significant steps for the companies involved, but they also contribute to the major national priority of increasing productivity.

Not only are there insufficient candidates for the many vacancies, the tech sector really struggles to recruit with the kind of diversity that is crucial for industries shaping the architecture of the future world. Any bias towards particular groups in the teams building new technology (e.g. a predominance of men) will almost inevitably lead to a bias towards the same groups in the technology being created. That matters when we're talking about Artificial Intelligence making big decisions about our lives.

2: Traditional education routes aren't working

The average level of debt on leaving university in England now stands at ￡50k. That's causing many applicants - particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds - to tread cautiously on their path to a degree.

In the tech sector specifically, employers are looking for candidates with commercial skills, communication and client experience as well as the technical skills required for the job. These are quite hard to manage through conventional degree courses like computer science.

Put together, there's an opportunity to rethink how we equip young people to be valuable for the tech sector whilst retaining the certainty and transfer-ability of a degree

3: Degree apprenticeships open new possibilities

Since 2015 it has been possible to secure a degree through an apprenticeship, with universities accrediting programmes in partnership with employers. This new route has proven successful with exactly the groups the tech sector is looking to recruit - over the last four years about 66% of those completing degree-level apprenticeships have been female, and roughly 15% have been BAME (compared to 8% studying through traditional routes) Source: DfE Data.

Despite the government's introduction of the apprenticeship levy, companies are still struggling to spend it at scale - particularly because of the need for infrastructure to implement apprenticeships within their business.

THE OPPORTUNITY

AspireTech is building a prestigious new route to equip young people from a fully diverse range of backgrounds for the specific skills needed in the tech sector.

This is not simply about getting people well-paid jobs (though that would be no bad thing). The fourth industrial revolution has the potential to entrench existing social divides, or to unleash the potential of whole new groups in society. What will make the difference is whether we can ensure the skills to shape the world are evenly distributed, like talent always is but opportunity too often isn't.

We're looking to partner with employers and universities to build a programme which will work for the brightest students and for the employers who need them most.

We'd love to hear your thoughts:

1. Is this a fair assessment of the problem?
2. What are the likely roadblocks we need to prepare for?
3. Who should we be speaking to?