So, I’ve just read an interesting article in the FT, and it outlines that there are several risks to the UK economy. The first is, of course, Brexit, and the other is our outmoded education system. The effect of Brexit on the UK could be significant, especially in limiting the recruitment of talent from the EU. Without access to talent, companies might not base themselves in the UK, and where companies will struggle to grow. It is then a vicious cycle downwards. One of the great attractions of tech companies to base themselves in the UK has been the access to talent, and that its major cities are attractive places to live (Edinburgh – my home city – is a great example of a city where tech people want to live).

Type 1 Visas – Good for big companies?

The solution, the author presents, is that there could be more Type 1 Visas for tech-focused workers and that this will favour large companies who have the resources to go through bureaucratic procedures. But that small and innovative companies are likely to struggle to both compete and have the resources to match large companies for these Visas. So Google, Apple and Microsoft would see the UK as a great place to base themselves, but small and innovative companies might look elsewhere in Europe to find a good supply of tech talent.

The author thus proposes a solution of using a “light touch” UK/EU visa system and where companies self-certify EU workers. For me, this is something that must be in place soon, as I have seen the difficult process of applying for Visas. Highly skilled tech workers do not have any problems in getting a job anywhere in the world, so the UK has got to be a place where they are welcomed and supported.

The worry, as highlighted in the EU referendum, is that many people still struggle to understand the difference between economic migration – the natural movement of skilled workers to areas of growth – and immigration.

Focus on STEM

The main thrust of the article is that our education system is not fit for a tech-driven economy, and it outlines a wide range of statistics to support the cases, such as where 40,000 extra graduates were required for STEM subjects, in order to fill 140,000 graduate-level jobs each year, and that 80% of tech-driven companies say that their greatest problem is filling their vacancies.

The article pushes the case that our reading and literacy at schools continues to rise, but that few pupils ever learn to code properly and any many pupils do very little beyond basic maths. But there’s a “Catch-22” in this, in that teachers are not being trained to change this focus.

When I look at the Computing Science subject at school in Scotland and England, I see a boring old “IT” course, which has little relevance to a modern world of data science, cybersecurity and cloud computing. The syllabus could have been written in the 1990s, and were we still fail to even set any standards in the way that kids code. The subject, too, struggles to get anywhere near the Top 10 in popularity, and is still dominated by boys (typically an 80/20% split). New initiatives in getting kids into coding often result in after-school events, and are patching in their scope.

It is when you look at the comments you start to see a better picture of what is really happening on the ground:

To be teaching kids how to use PowerPoint and Microsoft Word, and to be told that a child had to take drama rather than extra STEM subjects, is something, as a country perhaps shows that we are stuck in the 20th Century with a large part of our educational infrastructure. Rather that a real focus on what we require for our future workforce – to create workers who are truly tech-savvy, we still see coding at school as a little bit of a hobby subject, and not for those who are not going to be software engineers. In a world driven by data, the ability to code should be as natural as driving a spreadsheet.

R&D

An area not covered in the article is R&D (Research and Development), and how far the UK has fallen behind other countries in investing in the products of the future. In fact, the UK, relatively, spends under half the amount of the countries such as Sweden, Japan and Denmark:

In order to compete in a modern economy, companies need to be investing in R&D. But where should the funding come from, especially if access to EU funding might reduce over the next few years? Well, the Industrial Strategy for Britain gives some focus to increased spending by the UK Government on R&D [here].

It opens up by saying that the UK economy has been so successful in reducing unemployment and reducing the national debt, but the EU exit puts much of this good work at risk and may start to show some fundamental cracks in sourcing a skilled workforce, and in creating an economy which is truly tech-focused. While countries such as Estonia and Finland are moving fast to transform their economic and social infrastructure, the UK still has a good way to go to transform the way it works. Any economy still dealing with paper-based contracts for public sector contracts within the next few years, will struggle against those who support digital methods.

The strategy focuses on ideas, people, infrastructure, business environment and places, and where it is recognised that cities (‘the places’) will place a core part of driving a tech-driven economy, and places with a proven record of being tech-driven – London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cambridge, and so on – will see investment in creating places which can compete on a world stage.

Personally, I love the focus on promoting ideas, but whose ideas is it? Universities? … governments? … industry leaders? … I really hope that ideas come from every nook and cranny and that they are not reviewed by some heavy-weight board, with an overburned approach to the application process.

Ideas must come from vision, and match to a general vision, and often aim to disrupt existing thinking. Large companies often lack long-term vision, and are often risk averse. I’d rather give small amounts of funding to small companies, than giving large grants to large consortiums of organisations who have the resources to write excellent proposals, but often fail to deliver.

The grand challenges defined in the paper include:

All of these match well with a modern digital economy, and where support for society’s challenges can drive innovation and economic growth.

Let’s not have five-year funding for large research projects. Let’s have the support for big ideas from small groups, and then support them into the future if they manage to show promise. Let’s support people rather than companies. Let’s support collaboration across sectors, but do it in a small way at first, and if it works, go and fund it in a big way.

Getting universities and industry to more closely to work together must be a core strategy, especially in terms of focusing research work in universities toward the types of things that industry will find interesting. Our current model – though REF – often forces academics to focus on paper publishing for the sake of it, and concentrate on citations as key metrics. In a modern tech-driven economy, industry should work closely with universities, and produce outputs which can thrive when commercialised. This does require much more investment, and that PhD work becomes more focused on ideas which could show potential within 3-5 years.

People and change

What will be interesting is how these key “people” focused objectives will be implemented:

• Establish a technical education system that rivals the best in the world to stand alongside our world-class higher education system.
• Invest an additional £406 million in maths, digital and technical education, helping to address the shortage of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills.
• Create a new National Retraining Scheme that supports people to re-skill, beginning with a £64 million investment for digital and construction training.

The country has not proven yet that it has the motivation or infrastructure or drive to support the first two, and the devil will be in the detail.

In conclusion

The end conclusion of the article drives the points home:

Getting the right visa regime after Brexit would help the UK remain a high-tech hub. But modernising the country’s education system to bring it into line with what 21st century employers need would be a much better guarantee.

One thing I’d like to make sure is that our kids have the opportunities and the environment to thrive that many other generations have had. We now need to build a new world for them and give them the skills and motivation to make the best use of them. Our governments must play a major part in driving this and show that they lead rather than follow.

After completing an online application for a government grant recently, I was shocked how poor the application process was, and how little the methods had changed from the 1980s. Our governments need to wake up to blockchain, crypto signing, and all the other methods which will enhance our the core of our society and economy.

In the UK, let’s not forget our key focus is to:

Establish a technical education system that rivals the best in the world to stand alongside our world-class higher education system.

For 2018, this has got to happen, and for investment and drive to happen in every part of our educational infrastructure … and it especially needs to happen in schools. We seem to create syllubuses for schools, and then walk away from them, without giving them the proper resources to do them. The current state of Computer Science at school in Scotland is pretty bad, and no-one is really stepping forward to change it. I feel so sorry for schools and the great teachers we have, but something needs to change… fundamentally!