Exam results keep rising but pupils taking relevant subjects continue dropping
Hot on the heels of the recently announced A-level results, this week’s release of GCSE results indicated a rise in the pass rate – for the 23rd year in a row.
But if students are getting smarter, why is it that options/subjects such as languages and ICT have seen a drop in the number of pupils taking them?
In today’s multicultural/multilingual world, technology filters into all aspects of life; so does it make sense to opt of the subjects which could very well determine (or at least significantly influence) future job prospects?
“The IT industry may well value qualifications in areas other than IT, such as. Science, Mathematics etc, above pure IT subjects in the future,” observed Roger Newman, senior vice president at IT solutions provider Mahindra Satyam. “The next generation of knowledge workers, which are now entering higher education, have grown up with, and already have a good understanding of, the fundamentals of IT and so can develop into the type of person who can drive more business benefits from IT regardless of having a formal IT qualification.”
As the economy slowly recovers, demand for skilled labour will also increase. In this instance, the markets and industry knows what they need and know what they want. It needs skilled labour and it is ready to import or export it depending on the situation.
“The recent A-level and GCSE results suggest that there has been a general decline in the number of students taking IT subjects,” noted Newman “I believe it may be symptomatic of a shift in the types of skills that will be required in tomorrow’s IT workers. IT is now highly embedded in most business processes and businesses are increasingly using off the shelf applications and Open Source Solutions. It therefore follows that businesses rely on a higher degree of skill in understanding business processes and the application of technology to operations than the past.”
Newman stressed: “Somebody has to build the off-the-shelf applications and Open Source Solutions and, to do this; formal training in IT is required. In summary the decline in the number of people studying IT subjects will probably not affect outsourcing trends in the short or even medium term but will have a profound effect on the IT industry in the long term, unless a sensible balance is maintained.
In its August 2010 Labour Market Outlook survey, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that the demand for migrant workers has increased in line with improvements in the UK labour market during the past year.
The study surveyed 600 organisations of which 45% indicated that they had vacancies that were proving difficult to fill from the domestic labour market and were now looking overseas in a bid to fill the positions.
According to their figures about one in six (17%) employers intend to recruit migrant workers in the third quarter of 2010, which is above the previous peak of 15% recorded three months ago. Employers in the education and healthcare sectors are most likely to hire migrant labour (27% in each sector).
In a technology-based world, the budget cuts will continue affect the quality of education – among other public and social programmes – the outlook for Britain just keeps getting rosier…
