Oral evidence: Digital skills gap, HC 740Tuesday 8 March 2016
Oral evidence, 8 March 2016.
Witnesses
Mr Edward Vaizey MP, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State for Schools, Department for Education, gave evidence.
Chair
I welcome both Ministers to the table. Thank you for taking the time today. We are on a fairly tight schedule, as we are expecting votes quite shortly. We will be brief in our questions, and I implore you to be as brief as possible, within ministerial ambitions, in your answers. We have just had some very interesting evidence from James Thickett from Ofcom and Rachel Neaman from Go ON UK. They confirmed written evidence we received from techUK that said that the digital skills gap is costing the economy £2 billion a year; and 93% of companies say it is affecting operations and recruitment already. In particular, Ms Neaman said that the skills gap can be seen all along the digital skills pipeline, from basic skills up to higher skills, and that the place to start is by mainstreaming digital skills alongside literacy and numeracy in schools, in apprenticeship frameworks and in higher education courses. She gave us some interesting figures. She said that upskilling the entire adult population would cost £1.3 billion and it would be a value to the economy of £14 billion, which is something for all of us to think about with the Budget coming up next week. They also said that the success of a future digital skills strategy would be in how you define digital skills. They said it is not just about coding; it is about making sure you include basic skills all the way up to higher levels, and not forgetting about the need to have critical engagement with online content in the mix somewhere. My first question must be to the digital skills Minister. How far have we got with the digital skills strategy? Will it address some of those questions, and when can we expect it to appear?
Mr Vaizey
We have written the digital skills strategy. When you can expect it to appear is anybody’s guess. I thought we would publish it in February. It was in the famous Downing Street grid. It fell out of the Downing Street grid for reasons that I cannot fathom. If you were a theologian, you would have better ways of understanding how the Downing Street grid works. There is a rumour that it may appear in the Budget and there is a rumour that it may not appear in the Budget. Things like the local elections and purdah for the European referendum may stymie it as well, but as far as I am concerned it is ready to go.
Chair
Could you answer some of the questions I raised about mainstreaming and the issues about the definition of digital skills?
Mr Vaizey
There are four themes in the digital skills strategy. The first, which underpins it—think of the terrible logo the BBC now has for BBC3 where there is a line about digital infrastructure at the bottom—is about building the digital infrastructure we need for the UK. I know Mr Warman has strong views on that. The broadband roll-out and mobile roll-out are going very well, but we need to move up a gear to a gigabit Britain, which I want to do over the next five to 10 years. The three pillars on that base are, first, supporting the tech economy. How do we build on the progress we have already made in making the UK one of the best places in the world to start a tech company? Clearly, that includes a skills aspect. How do we start to ensure we have the courses, both in schools but also in further and higher education, and the relationship between business and education, which I think digital now makes imperative, because it changes so quickly, to give people the skills they need to work in the tech economy? The second section is about the digital transformations we need to see in key public policy areas, with education and health being the most obvious and prominent. The third pillar is digital government. How do we push on with what has already been a very successful programme over five years to make Government’s relationship with citizens a more digital one? Those are the main themes of the digital strategy.
Chair
A particular comment that came out was that investment in broadband and 4G—the infrastructure you have just mentioned—needs to be matched by investment in digital skills. I think £450 million has been committed to the Government Digital Service. Will some of that be allocated to delivery of the digital strategy? Will there be funding attached to the digital strategy? How will the funding work?
Mr Vaizey
I have not seen any particular new funding attached to the digital strategy; that will probably have to come through the Budget or the spending review in the autumn. The digital strategy is looking at the aspirations for the next 10 years. We want to achieve what is realistic and what we can focus on in education and health. Transport is another issue. You may have seen the story that appeared over the weekend about driverless lorries. It is important to emphasise that there is a lot of funding going into innovation, whether it is smart cities, driverless cars, 5G research and so on. There is investment going on in skills, whether it is particular investment in digital inclusion, where we have invested £36 million in separate programmes, or other elements of investment: £40 million in data courses and £20 million in Q‑Step, which is a programme working with 15 universities on data analysis. There are particular packets of funding for certain aspects of digital policy, whether skills, research into future technologies or, say, the fiscal climate for tech start-ups, but at the moment there is no particular funding package allocated to the digital strategy. That will emerge either in the Budget or in the spending review later in the year.
Chair
Could I ask the Minister for Schools how you respond to the call essentially for the mainstreaming of digital skills and elevating digital skills to the same importance as literacy and numeracy in school education and in apprenticeships and higher education? Is this a demand that you recognise from the figures we have been hearing?
Nick Gibb
It is, and it is one of the reasons we took the decision in 2012 to disapply the old ICT curriculum and replace it with computing throughout all four key stages. It is one of only five subjects in the school curriculum that is compulsory from the age of five through to the age of 16, including English, maths and PE. I think that demonstrates the importance we attach to digital skills. The fourth one is science.
Matt Warman
We would all like to see digital, on the one hand, embedded in every single Department and, on the other, joined up in a coherent central Government strategy. Can you enlighten us on how Government think about digital? Is it a separate thing within each Department, so we can say how much Department X, Y or Z is spending on digital, or is digital simply a tool we all now expect everyone to be using as much as possible?
Mr Vaizey
It is complicated. To a certain extent, DCMS has established itself as the digital Department. We now have the digital economy unit within DCMS; it used to be jointly with BIS, but it is now wholly in DCMS. We have taken on some additional policy responsibilities that I think link closely with the wider digital agenda, such as data protection. I am also a joint BIS Minister. Although Nick Boles is the Skills Minister, we work very closely together on the digital skills agenda, so there is an element of coherence. If you look across the silos of Government, there are two different joining-ups that need to take place. One is the link between BIS, DCMS and the Cabinet Office on the top-level digital stuff—digital in business, digital infrastructure and the tech investment environment— and the Government Digital Service, which is the Cabinet Office. Then there is the trickier task of the cross-Government Departments. Education will have a big focus on digital learning; Health will have a big focus on how you make the health service more digital so you can treat patients in the home; Transport will have a huge focus on digital both in terms of making the trains run better through to mobile on trains and driverless cars, which I have already referenced; and Energy in terms of smart meters. It is in almost any Department. We need to think hard about how we join that up. We have a digital taskforce that brings Ministers together to get the issues on the agenda and move it into the centre, if it needs a push, but we have to think about whether we need central expertise that can help particular Departments with specific digital projects that they may want to make happen. Should those be happening in separate silos?
Matt Warman
Does that mean that DCMS is the lead Department for the digital strategy, working closely with the Cabinet Office, or is it not sensible to think of it as one Department in charge?
Mr Vaizey
DCMS is the lead Department on digital strategy, but we work closely with the Cabinet Office, which takes a big chunk because of the Government Digital Service. In terms of the lead Department on digital strategy and how it impacts on separate policy areas, whether it is education, transport, health or energy, we have been the convenor more than the leader. We have worked with Ministers in those Departments on the digital strategy, but we have been the lead Department in pulling together the digital strategy, with Treasury oversight.
Matt Warman
There is also an industrial economy strategy. Is the digital strategy going to replace some aspects of that, or are they two separate things?
Mr Vaizey
They are technically two separate things. There is also an innovation strategy, which may well emerge in the Budget, and it will be interesting to see how that works with our digital strategy as well.
Matt Warman
Does it feel to you as if this is lined up and co‑ordinated in the way that you would perhaps start it if you had a blank piece of paper, or is it that something that has emerged as digital has become a more important part of every Department?
Mr Vaizey
It does not feel lined up. We are on a journey, and we need to take a step back and think very hard about how we line it up in the next six to 12 months. There is a great opportunity for Government to co‑ordinate a great deal of work. We have achieved a great deal. We are seen as a very digital-friendly Government, certainly in terms of our status in Europe and the digital single market. We are seen as one of the leading nations to which the Commission will turn for advice, and it will take our views quite seriously in how we look forward to digital. But because it is such a fast-changing landscape—if that is not too weird a metaphor—we need to take a step back and think how we join all this up together. Having said that, within that statement there is an element of contradiction, because we live in a digital economy; we live in a digital environment. To say you can have a single digital strategy and perhaps a leading digital Department immediately begs the question: what happens when everything is digital? You will still have an Education Department, a Transport Department and so on. It is a complicated thing, but I think Government need to reflect and refresh as we go forward.
Chris Green
The Government propose to achieve a target of 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020. How will this affect the skills gap, in particular in the digital sector?
Mr Vaizey
We have a very ambitious target for apprenticeships. I am a strong advocate for our apprenticeship strategy. Apprenticeships have come out of the wilderness, if you like, and are now seen as very much a mainstream education opportunity for young people, and I think that is quite right. From my constituency perspective, with a science base like Harwell, over quite a few years I have seen the huge opportunities that apprenticeships provide for young people in my constituency. To me, they feel like lottery winners. They do a four-year course where they are paid, and they come out with skills that are in huge demand and they have a great opportunity to work for a variety of very interesting employers. I am very pleased with the apprenticeship strategy. We are focusing on digital apprenticeships as well. We call them reformed apprenticeships. We have 17 digital standards we are working through at the moment and we have already achieved three. I think we have 90,000 people doing digital apprenticeships, which is an increase of more than 50% over the last five years. We want to make sure that those digital apprenticeships are fit for purpose and have proper standards so that those apprentices can get jobs in the workforce when they leave.
Chris Green
Do you have a sense from the tech industry that they are happy with the progress and the numbers, or are they calling out for more people to come into the sector?
Mr Vaizey
I think they are happy. I am engaged with some of the bigger tech companies, particularly over the apprenticeship levy and the ones that are likely to pay it. More and more tech companies are focused on apprenticeships as a way forward. We have also introduced a degree apprenticeship. We have 300 people in the first year of the degree apprenticeship. We thought we could achieve 150 in the first year. There are nine universities and 40 employers engaged in that. Particularly in tech, and perhaps the STEM subjects in general, there is a feeling that you have to have a relationship with an employer to gain the kind of skills you will need in the workforce because they change so rapidly. That is why I think tech employers in particular are very pro apprenticeships. They realise they can get the best of both worlds: they get the education their young people need, and the relationship with what they are doing in day-to-day work means that the skills they have when they come into the workforce full-time will be up to date and appropriate.
Chris Green
Talking to parents and children thinking about what course to go on and what path to take, I get the general sense that there is still not enough awareness about apprenticeships, or certainly not enough confidence that they are a good option for high-performing people, and if you want to do something that will really test you, you go to university. Is that perception changing in society now? How widely known and understood is the degree apprenticeship?
Mr Vaizey
Degree apprenticeships are just starting but, as they get under way, more and more employers will start going out to the recruitment pool, which starts in school, and saying, “This is a potential route for you to a very fulfilling career.” Apprenticeships are moving up the agenda, but even though the Government have focused on them for the past three or four years, it takes time to change a cultural perception. I mention in passing the university technical colleges, on which Nick may have views. They are helping to change that perception. One has just opened in Didcot in my constituency. It was massively over-subscribed. It is an appealing route for education, but I accept that it will take a number of years to equalise, because for the last 20 or 30 years it has all been about getting people to go to university. The change back to the apprenticeship route as a way forward into a very fulfilling career has been focused on for only the past three or four years. It will take time to change some rooted perceptions.
Chris Green
Someone in my constituency is working in a very high-tech field. She is studying for her degree, and, when she passes that, the expectation is that she will go on to a masters. She was told by someone close to her, “If only you had gone to university it would have been so much better for you than the apprenticeship route.” Improvement in understanding is incredibly important. Is there sufficient integration between people studying for computer science degrees and employers, because we need the real experience you can get by visiting and working with a company?
Mr Vaizey
That is partly what the degree apprenticeships are designed to do. We are trying to make it more porous between the employer and the higher education institution so that people come into the world of work with the right skills. Research and analysis show, bizarrely, that computer science degrees have a very high rate of unemployment, which is completely counter-intuitive. One of the reasons is that, although you might learn the academic aspects of computer science, you are not given the tools at university to apply them in the real world. We want to break down the barriers between employers and universities. That was why we commissioned, for example, the Shadbolt review to look at how to make computer science courses more fit for purpose in universities, and it was why we had the Skills Funding Agency review of further education, which reported last month. We will look carefully at its recommendations and take them forward. For example, it talks about the language used in describing courses, making sure there is a common language so that people know what skills they are going to pick up. We have to be absolutely ruthless with courses offered by further and higher education in terms of the skills they are giving our young people, and that is what we intend to do. The Wakeham review will also look at the wider STEM courses in higher education, but we need employers to work with us to make sure that universities and colleges are providing the kind of courses people need.
Chris Green
Do you see a radical change in the near future, with a very substantial shift towards the apprenticeship side from traditional university courses?
Mr Vaizey
I expect to see a shift towards apprenticeships anyway because we have a very stretching target of 3 million apprentices across the piece. I hope we will see a shift in the next two years in further and higher education in terms of the quality of courses being offered.
Chair
Minister, I think I misunderstood you. You said that the digital skills strategy was written, but then you said you were still considering the outcome of the Shadbolt review. Surely, the Shadbolt review would be taken into account in the digital strategy.
Mr Vaizey
That is a fair point. I will take that back with me. As we are not publishing the digital strategy I will make sure the Shadbolt review is incorporated in it.
Chair
Excellent. I am glad we were able to help.
Mr Vaizey
That is what I come here for.
Chair
We look forward to seeing that evidence. There is one further point I want to ask about. I think I have asked you about it before. We are intent on raising the importance of digital skills up to the level of numeracy and literacy and, as I understand it, most apprenticeship frameworks include a requirement for English and maths, but they do not include a requirement for digital skills across all sectors. Is there any intention to start mainstreaming digital skills in the apprenticeship frameworks, because most employers we have spoken to seem to feel that going forward this will be necessary?
Mr Vaizey
There is that intention. I have spoken to Nick Boles about that. We want to ensure that apprenticeships going forward have an element of digital skills exactly on the basis you put it: basic literacy, basic English, basic maths and basic digital skills.
Victoria Borwick
To take us back to schooling, the GCSE ICT et al, my understanding is that in 2015, more than 110,000 students studied the GCSE ICT, compared with only 35,000 studying computer science. However, in response to the DFE’s consultation, 35% favoured keeping the ICT compared with 39% who supported the new computing curriculum. You briefly talked earlier about its importance and the difference between the two. Perhaps you can tell us a little more about the Government’s rationale for scrapping the ICT rather than changing or reforming the subject.
Nick Gibb
This is part of a broader reform of GCSEs and A-levels across all subjects. We want to raise the academic rigour of all the subjects so that our public qualifications are on a par with the most successful education countries in the world. It is a hugely important objective for our country’s long-term future and the future of the individuals concerned.
Victoria Borwick
I am sure they are doing that through the ICT route.
Nick Gibb
I am sure they are doing extremely well. All the qualifications that young people have been taking in the past require a huge amount of work, but we have to keep pace with changes happening in other countries. The whole education world internationally is not standing still. We have to make sure that ours keeps pace with the most successful countries. That is what the reforms are all about. That is one key set of principles they have to adhere to. The second is that there is no overlap between different qualifications. Quite a number of A‑levels and GCSEs have not gone forward to being reformed. We took a lot of time over the decision about the ICT curriculum. As I told the Chair earlier, we disapplied the ICT curriculum at pre-GCSE. The national curriculum is now a computer curriculum and there are far more skills in it than simply teaching children how to use existing applications. It is all about coding and understanding digital literacy and how computers operate.
Victoria Borwick
Who are your key players in designing that revised curriculum?
Nick Gibb
The British Computer Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering were both involved in that process. It was a very difficult decision. We drafted what a new reformed GCSE ICT would look like. In the end, we took the decision that we would have only one qualification in this area because we did not want people not to take the computer science GCSE and A-level. We want as many of our young people to take that as possible. There are a lot of technical and professional qualifications for young people who do not want to take computer science but want to continue to develop their digital skills. Given that we are teaching this from the age of five right through to 16, regardless of whether you take the computer science GCSE, that is 11 or 12 years of being involved in this particular subject, so the skills we want school leavers to have should have been acquired in those years of study.
Victoria Borwick
Concerns have been raised that there are not enough computer science teachers and that most of the existing ICT teachers are not necessarily sufficiently skilled or qualified to deliver the new computing curriculum. Do you have a view on that?
Nick Gibb
It is a very challenging new curriculum to deliver, so we have invested about £4.5 million over three years to help teachers acquire those new skills. One particular project is called the network of teaching excellence. This establishes a cadre of 300 master teachers who go out into the school system and cascade their skills down to other teachers. That is a very important part of upskilling the teaching profession in being able to deliver this more demanding national curriculum subject.
Victoria Borwick
I want to ask about the core subjects as far as Ofsted is concerned. Obviously, it does not necessarily look at all subjects. Should Ofsted start to measure the use of technology in schools as a formal performance measure?
Nick Gibb
It is important not to go back to the days when Ofsted had 27 objectives to measure. What happened then was that the core academic function of schools was only a very tiny proportion of what they were inspecting. It is important that Ofsted ensures schools have a broad and balanced curriculum. That will include computing. They will look at the equipment the school has in relation to how it delivers the computing curriculum.
Victoria Borwick
From what we heard in an earlier session, it is not just the equipment people have; it is what they do with it. That is one of the key lessons we learned today. Just to have the equipment does not necessarily mean they are acquiring the right skills on it.
Nick Gibb
I totally agree with that, but when Ofsted are inspecting a school—it is not a long process; an inspection takes two days—they look at the curriculum as a whole. They want to make sure the school is offering and delivering a high-quality broad and balanced curriculum. They look right across the national curriculum subjects to see whether or not the school is offering a high-quality standard of education.
Victoria Borwick
Is it your view that, in terms of recommendations about digital skills in the UK economy, computing should be a core subject?
Nick Gibb
It is a core subject in the sense that it is a national curriculum subject from five to 16. There are only five subjects in that category out of all the school subjects—maths, English, science, PE and now computing. In that sense it is a core subject in our schools.
Carol Monaghan
Can I ask a little more about this subject? I am not an expert on the English education system, but I have been hearing a lot about the EBacc and I am looking at its science section. There are three bullet points and only one of them mentions computer science. Is there a case for having computer science considered as a main science along with physics, chemistry and biology?
Nick Gibb
Yes, there is, and it is. There are two ways of fulfilling the science pillar of the EBacc. One is to be entered for three of the four sciences: chemistry, physics, biology and computer science. You have to be entered for three out of four of those, and you have to gain a grade C in at least two of them. That is one way of delivering it. The other is to take the double award science.
Carol Monaghan
The other two ways I am looking at on the Government’s website do not mention computer science as the science pillar of EBacc.
Nick Gibb
I do not know what website you are looking at, but I can tell you that computer science was added to the science pillar in 2013, I think, and we have seen a growth in the numbers since then. In 2013, 4,000 young people took the computer science GCSE. That rose in 2014 to 15,700, and last year it was 33,000. I expect to see it grow further in the future.
Carol Monaghan
This is a Department for Education paper updated on 12 February 2016. [Interruption.] I am saved by the bell.
Nick Gibb
I will take a look at that, but I can absolutely assure you that computer science is a subject that can help you get the science element of the EBacc qualification by a combination of GCSEs. In answer to Victoria Borwick’s question, that is another reason why it is at the core of the school curriculum; it is a fundamental part of the EBacc.
Chair
As we have several votes, we are going to adjourn the session now, but we may have some follow-up questions that we will write to you about in order to make sure we have the fullest possible evidence from both Departments, which I am sure you would want to see reflected in our final report. I bring this session to a close. Oral evidence: Digital skills gap, HC 740 1 [1] The witness later clarified that half of 11-year-olds own a smartphone. [2] The witness later clarified it is the speed of take-up of traditional internet connections that is slowing. [3] The witness later clarified it is these households do not have a fixed broadband line.