Digital Education: One Giant Leap for Students — and Teachers Too?

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The recent introduction of coding across classrooms in the UK is a mini Apollo moon-landing as far as children’s education in the 21st century goes. Picture scenes of 5-year-olds coming home from school and telling their parents about algorithms, debugging and Boolean logic! Parents, are you feeling slightly spooked by reading this? Then brace yourselves to answer the odd coding related question as confidently as the sum of five plus 10!

About a year ago, the Department for Education (DfE) outlined its vision for today’s students and tomorrow’s workers to be “digitally literate” citizens. It talked about turning students into “active participants in a digital world” — getting involved in creating and developing, and not just being passive consumers of tech.

Adding coding to the classroom is a logical equation, given wide-spread concerns around a digital skills talent shortage stifling R&D and threatening the UK’s lead as a digital powerhouse in Europe. Yet apparently, a little more homework is needed to be done. We’ve, for instance, learnt from a survey we’ve done as part of our state-of-the-nation review “Generation Tech” that some 4,500 teachers in the UK currently don’t have computers to teach kids tech.

As part of the survey, we’ve also asked teachers across Britain about their level of preparedness when it comes to teaching tech in schools. The responses were short of satisfactory. We’ve had dozens of replies about the tech trolley that no-one uses because the gadgets don’t work. There were also complaints about the lack of IT staff in schools and a lack of budget to make new IT investments.

Even more disheartening was a sense among teachers of feeling overwhelmed and out of step with technological advancements. Teachers spoke of having no one to turn to, yet being expected to train up a new generation of digital experts.

Only 15% of teachers felt they were “totally computer savvy”, and seven out of 10 teachers said that they currently did not tailor classes to digital skills relevant in the workplace. That’s over two-thirds of teachers expressing concern about being able to nurture “digitally literate” citizens.

The right way forward has to be across-the-board government-funded teacher training. We’ve thus called on the government to cross this divide by helping teachers to understand the full benefits of using technology in the classroom and by improving the support available to teachers regarding digital skills. We also want to see local authorities to take action to make sure schools have the funding they need to adopt new technologies.

After all, it’s our children’s education at stake.

Of course, the ultimate goal is for every school in the country to have the hardware, software and expertise it needs. In the meantime, there are ways to boost the use of digital tools in spite of tight budgets.

For example, teachers can help themselves by sharing best practice — schools that are struggling can learn from those that aren’t. Also, digital tools and learning programmes don’t have to be as costly as they used to be, and teachers can seek advice as to whether the procurement fits their school’s specific needs. There are also volunteer-led organisations such as the CodeClub, ALT, and Nesta who are experienced in helping schools with limited expertise to boost pupils’ digital skills.

With the help of these small steps, and by working together, we can take a giant leap forward and offer children an education that equips them with the digital skills they need. This doesn’t have to be as difficult as putting a man on the moon.

Duncan Higgins is marketing director at Virgin Media Business.

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