Education

Tackling the digital divide

Richard French, director of education policy at BCS Learning & Development
Ltd, part of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, speaks to PSE about the new
traineeship programme proposed by the Government.

Despite the younger generation often being stereotyped as permanently having their heads down, engrossed in their phones and latest gadgets, it does not always follow that they have a suffi cient level of IT capability to be of benefi t in the workplace.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, wants the Government to recognise this skills gap in the proposed Traineeship programme, which seeks to act as a stepping stone between school and the world of work. The programme would offer 16-24 year olds support in the job market and include maths and English studies for those who need them, work preparation training and high-quality work experience.

Announcing the scheme, skills minister Matthew Hancock said: “We want to support everyone in our country to reach their personal best. To do that, we are introducing Traineeships to help young people with the skills they need to get a job, and hold down a job.

“That’s vital for our economy to compete in the global race. And it’s a question of fairness. Traineeships will give young people the helping hand and experience they need to compete for Apprenticeships and good jobs.”

PSE spoke to director of education policy at BCS Learning & Development Ltd, Richard French, about the importance of including digital skills in traineeships.

The digital divide

Despite the need to move towards public services being delivered online, there are “real concerns” over accessibility, he said, since the latest statistics suggest there are still up to 11 million people living in the UK without access to the internet, three-quarters of whom may not know how to use it even if they had access.

French described this as a “digital divide” and highlighted that 77% of people in employment require digital user skills, regardless of their job role.

He said: “We fully support the Traineeship model, but while we don’t forget that maths and English are important, digital skills are as important in this day and age: they’re almost part of the modern three ‘R’s.

“They’re so vital for everyday use in terms of employment that we don’t want students to get to a stage where they’re great at English and maths but lack the digital skills to work in an everyday office environment.”

This doesn’t just apply to IT-specifi c jobs, as the use of digital skills is now so widespread in employment that most offi ce jobs require a certain level of competency in IT.

French said: “We don’t want a generation to come through as the ‘digital have-nots’.

“We’re trying to avoid a whole section of society unable to access proper work because they don’t have digital skills.”

The BCS is looking towards Government to avoid this scenario, and the Traineeships programme is a “step in the right direction”.

Skills in practice

Although many young people can appear digitally equipped, with high profi ciency on social devices, this is not necessarily directly transferable to the workplace, he warned. “Some pupils believe they have digital skills – they’re very good on smartphones, on tablets – but when it comes to everyday application of those digital skills, the problem for the employer is they don’t have enough to just automatically dovetail into the workplace straight away.”

To clearly understand young people’s level of digital competence, French suggested the Government should create a “good defi nition of digitally-savvy”.

This could be incorporated into traineeships through vocational qualifi cations, as a form of flexible support. But the exact implementation of the skills was less important to the BCS than the fact that the Government must accept the need for their inclusion.

Digital by default

In an age of rapidly changing technology, the Government is moving more services online, to go “digital by default”, savings huge amounts of money through cut-cost administration, human error and storage issues.

French said he was “very worried” about the consequences of the move, which risked increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

He added: “We support that but the 11 million people who don’t have access to online services or know how to use them – we don’t want to grow that number and we don’t want people who are probably the most vulnerable in society not to have access to Government services because they’re not digital. We want that whole gap to be plugged.”

The Government’s approach to digital services is on the whole on the right track, he added, and recognises the need to improve digital competency and boost the productivity of the UK workforce.

“This is to build on the good work that Government is doing, what they are doing is absolutely right. We want to make sure that the people using those services are fully skilled and able to do so. Government policy is right to push things online, [but] we need to make sure people don’t slip through the net and we need to mobilise the key departments, DWP, BIS, and all the other Government agencies, to generate awareness and action to improve the digital competence of the potential workforce.” As IT and digital skills continue to grow in importance, French concluded: “It’s no longer optional."