Government: School ICT programmes 'need reform'

The government has backed calls to change the way schools teach ICT, saying that the current programme is "in need of reform".

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) responded to the Next Gen report published by Ian Livingston and Alex Hope earlier this year, which criticised UK schools for failing to teach students programming code.

"The Government recognises that the current ICT programme is insufficiently rigorous and in need of reform," noted the response published today, going on to point out that a review of the national curriculum was launched in January this year.

Effective

However, the government is wary of including specific skills like coding in the curriculum, saying that "learning the skills to use ICT effectively and acquiring the knowledge of the underpinning computer science are two different (albeit complementary) subjects."

The UK games and visual effects industries have suffered due to the UK computing skills crisis, having had to rely instead on talent brought into the country from overseas.

Ed Vaizey, the creative industries minister, said of the report, "We need to invest in talent that will ensure the UK remains at the forefront of games creativity."

Livingstone, co-author of the original report, was upbeat on the government's response.

He told the BBC, "It's an open door for us to have a dialogue and talk to the Department for Education in particular which we couldn't do until quite recently."