ScotlandIS submission for Skills and Business Alignment Needs December 2021
Digital as we know it has accelerated to the very forefront of our society in the last year. Scotland is home to a thriving tech ecosystem with over 1,500 companies that contributed £4.9bn Gross Value Added (GVA) to Scotland’s economy in 2019, accounting for 3.5% of total GVA. GVA per head for the tech sector is 40% higher than for the economy, making it a considerable contributor to Scotland’s economy. However, we cannot be complacent, we must remain competitive and innovative to compete with other countries across the globe who are utilising technologies at pace to enhance economic and social prosperity. Scotland is uniquely placed, small enough to be agile, big enough to make a difference, however as a nation we must ensure we invest in our people as we build towards a digitally inclusive and leading country. The first step of such investment should take place in our primary schools.
In 2020, approximately 11,240 digital technologies businesses were registered in Scotland, accounting for 6.3% of the Scottish business base. Over 97,000 people were in employment in the sector, which equates to 3.7% of Scotland’s total employment. Year on year this figure is expected to increase and as such it is imperative that we act now in order to prevent further skills shortages.
Scotland’s economy will only flourish if we are able to develop, attract and retain employees who are qualified and able to fulfil the jobs of the future. That future will be built around digital skills. We must invest now to ensure we grasp the opportunity or risk being left behind by competitors across the globe.
The Scottish Government’s recognition of digital is to be commended, we’re on an upwards trajectory, evolving as a digital nation and our new Digital Strategy puts user needs and our citizens at the heart of everything we do. Scottish Government have committed spend to grow the digital industries through the tech scaler programme, funding ecosystem building events and to harness digital education, all outputs of the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, and created new Cyber and AI strategies, all of which is welcomed by industry.
However, as a representative body for the digital industries we have to query if the funding goes far enough, or if there has to be a digital shift in our education and skills thinking and more wide-ranging reforms are needed. We suggested an approach to a digital shift in Education to the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery on 24th June 2020 and if members of the committee are interested, they can view the paper here.
The Covid19 crisis has exposed challenges in education in Scotland from primary to tertiary. It has highlighted issues with equality of access, quality of learning materials and the disparity in infrastructure, approach, and delivery across the 32 local authority areas, 13 College regions and the Universities.
The world has changed, Scotland can lead this change if we capitalise on the potential of doing things differently and seize the potential to harness digital learning and the expertise within our education system.
Our schools grow our future talent, they feed into colleges and universities and then, into the workforce. However, there is no systemic approach to Lifelong Learning post 25 years for those in work, seeking to re-join the labour market or upskill to meet the needs of the workplace. If we fail to transform our education system in line with the accelerated global changes, we fail the educators and the workforce of the future. Covid19 brings an accelerated need to fully understand the whole online learning environment.
Our schools are the fundamental access point to grow our future talent, they feed into colleges and universities and then, into the workforce. The pandemic has created a real opportunity for us to look at how we can begin to digitally transform the nation, whilst we want to ensure that our sector continues to grow post pandemic, we equally need to ensure that those sectors out with the core tech services are also given the skills and opportunities to digitally transform in order to ensure they too can recover post pandemic.
We must highlight and build awareness of the fact that digital literacy is embedded in almost every role in every sector and as such must be included in every aspect of education.
ScotlandIS have developed an innovative and responsive new project in collaboration with DYW Glasgow. This project will provide every secondary school in Glasgow, North and South Lanarkshire, West Glasgow with a senior tech expert at their disposal – called a Digital Critical Friend. and in partnership with SDS we will role this out in South of Scotland also.
The aim of this legacy building project is to make sure the curriculum is industry relevant; teachers are upskilled, supported and sector savvy and young people have an increased awareness of digital career opportunities and what is required to get the jobs within the digital tech sector. A large part of the reason the skills gap in this industry exists is because of the drop off rates throughout school of children and young people taking the subject or having the opportunity to.
The tech industry today promises creative, flexible, and highly rewarding career pathways, and it is estimated that around 80% of future jobs will require STEM skills. Only 27% of young women say they would consider a career in technology, and only 3% would say it is their first choice of career. (PwC UK, Women in Tech Report). Analysis done by SDS has shown the number of women in tech in Scotland has risen from 18% to 23.4% in the last 2 years.
Following the pandemic there is a higher expectancy for everyday use of tech to be the norm in many workplaces. Young people must have the skills and knowledge to compete and succeed post pandemic. 13,000 digital tech job opportunities are created every year and a vast number of those go unfilled and this number is set to rise.
The Digital Critical Friend fits with two current drivers to develop opportunities and market led career paths for young people in response to recommendations of both Scottish Government publications. In 2020, the STER Review looked at the Scottish technology sector and concluded that computing science should be treated as a core school subject in the same way as maths and physics.
The programme although in its infancy is already producing success stories, with one Glasgow school currently without a dedicated Computing Science teacher has chosen to utilise their digital critical friend to focus on a second year business education class, the digital critical friend ran a series of sessions on software development, testing and careers and opportunities in IT. The pupils enjoyed the sessions, particularly a Q&A session with some of their colleagues and one where they got to do some testing and find bugs and this schools has reported a number of pupils are now looking to progress their skills and knowledge in computing science and selecting this in S3. Our mantra for the programme is “you can’t be what you can’t see”. It also allows teachers to access industry mentors and exposing our future talent pipeline to our positive industry role models.
Young people are the future talent who will fill the Digital Sector vacancies, so we must get it right at an early stage.
The Digital Critical Friend will let teachers and pupils know what is happening in the sector, where the new technologies are, share emerging career opportunities and how to access them, help teachers advocate to the school SMT’s for more or better funding for their department, and encourage young people into the subject.
In addition to Digital Critical Friends, ScotlandIS aims to provide CPD workshops for teachers across the network, including subjects; Cyber Security/Ethical Hacking, Python Coding, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Pseudocode
The aim is to shape the curriculum for future jobs, and that young people are informed of the employment opportunities in digital tech when making subject choices, applying for jobs and further study.
We must ensure our curriculum is fit for purpose and will create the future talent pipeline. Our educators need support from industry to ensure the right skillsets are being taught and brought to the forefront.
Recent research by Education Scotland noted that 301 of the 356 high schools in Scotland who engaged, 30 schools did not have a dedicated computing science teacher. Of those 30, 20 schools have confirmed they deliver the subject in S1 and S2, some as a combined digital course.
In our S1 and S2 classes, limited coding is taught. Computing Science includes various Microsoft office modules. We must stop portraying this as computing science. We’re misleading our children and young people that this is what they should expect should they look to the tech sector as a career path.
Scotland has been impacted by the well documented skills shortage currently experienced across the UK, Europe and the US. Firms are struggling to recruit the staff needed to build and deliver their products and services and salary levels are rapidly increasing, disadvantaging smaller companies and particularly our SME (small to medium enterprise) community.
This situation is being made more acute by the growing demand for specialist digital skills from non-technology businesses as digital increasingly pervades all aspects of the economy.
The jobs of the future and the skills required will evolve at pace in the coming years. There is an expectation that there will be a rising demand in areas such as low carbon energy, data science, data analytics, artificial intelligence, including machine learning and robotics, material science, remote operations, and cyber security. In the last few years demand for cloud computing skills in particular has increased steadily according to our annual survey analysis.
We need to embed digital thinking from a young age in our schools, and we need to give our teachers the access to resources and ability to teach our children the skills they need for a digital future.
We are failing our young people and their digital future by making access to a digital curriculum difficult for them. The most recent teacher census shows the number of computing science teachers in Scotland has dropped by almost a quarter over the past 13 years, plummeting from 766 in 2008 to 595 in 2020.
In 2001 there were just over 28,000 pupils who picked Computing Science and over 9800 of them were females.
As of 2020 just over 9800 pupils picked Computing Science and just over 1800 of them female.
We need to ensure we have enough homegrown digital professionals in the years to come. Increased spend and commitment to digital technology skills education, both upskilling those already in the workforce and giving young people the ability to thrive in the digital world, would help addressing the skills gap which is holding the digital technologies industry back. To seize this opportunity fully, adequate government funding and policy reforms are required to incentivise investments and commitment by both the public and private sectors.
Scotland must accelerate our progress towards a diverse and inclusive workforce to enhance our chronic productivity issues. This must be tackled at the outset in our schools.
Just 20% of our school pupils studying computing science Level 5 are girls, and only 16% of students pursuing computing degrees at university are women. Current female participation in the tech sector sits at 23%, yet research suggests firms with higher levels of gender diversity are 15% more likely to outperform rivals. Over the years, Women in Tech has been one example where significant progress has been made in terms of improving the gender balance. However, diversity comes in many different forms.ScotlandIS consider it vital to focus on gender alongside the rest of these protected characteristics such as age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and religious beliefs. To have a truly diverse and inclusive digital and tech workforce in Scotland, it is essential that we are representative of everybody in society.
To this end, In July 2020, ScotlandIS set up our Diversity and Inclusion committee with representation from all aspects of the 2010 protected characteristics Equalities Act which we hope will drive awareness and change towards a truly diverse digital and tech workforce across all of Scotland. We also work closely with SDS and are part of their Neurodiversity in Tech workstream.
ScotlandIS has worked with Skills Development Scotland (SDS) on the Skills Investment Plan and its outputs for several years, and the various opportunities available through the Digital Start Fund and will continue to do so. We are part of the SDS Digital Economy Skills Group and will also work with them to develop the digital economy skills action plan.
The creation of Digital Xtra Fund (by ScotlandIS in partnership with SDS in 2016) has enabled initiatives aimed at children and young people to be funded and capture their imagination at an early age, while CodeClan (again created by ScotlandIS in partnership with SDS and industry in 2015) is retraining and upskilling many new people into the sector.
In December 2020 ScotlandIS created our first Strategic Skills board aimed at tackling the country’s digital skills gap and includes representatives from across private and public sector and educational institutions. As a nation, we require increased collaboration from both business and government with a much stronger focus on promoting and delivering digital skills training across industry, academia, and schools.
To bridge the gap between academia and Industry, we need to focus on placement programmes which equip students for the world of work.
The digital skills partnership, run by ScotlandIS, has brought industry and academia closer together enabling industry to influence and support the teaching in Further and Higher education without having to overhaul the full system. Colleges are a key source of providing these shorter, sharper skills interventions to upskill and reskill individuals in data mining and data analytics.
Recruitment of university graduates has remained high with 71% of responding businesses reporting they are likely to recruit this type of talent in the next 12 months, slightly down from last year’s 80% figure.
Demand for college graduates has decreased slightly, from 46% to 44%.
Just over half of respondents (53%) said they are likely to take on students for work placements. Graduate apprentices are the most sought after again this year, with 33% of respondents reporting they are likely to recruit someone for a Graduate Apprenticeship (down from 44% in 2020).
Interest in modern apprentices decreased (from 28% to 22%) as well as foundation apprentices (from 14% to 12%).
However, 44% of respondents are likely to recruit someone who underwent retraining only down 1% from the previous year.
Scotland’s economy will only flourish if we are able to develop, attract and retain employees who are qualified and able to fulfil the jobs of the future. That future will be built around digital skills. We must invest now to ensure we grasp the opportunity or risk being left behind by competitors across the globe.