Democratizing Tech Education for the Digital Economy

Rethinking how to future-proof the next-generation workforce

Benjamin Franklin once famously said that there are only two certainties in this world: death and taxes. Fast-forward more than 230 years and we could argue it’s time to add a third: technology. Whether it’s digital, software or hardware-based technology, knowledge is king. And as we’ve witnessed repeatedly when it comes to using IT, it’s increasingly impossible to succeed without the right set of skills.

A Persistent Skills Barrier to Technology Adoption

In the UK, as in other countries, pertinent questions are being asked about this topic: is our workforce well-trained to take advantage of the latest technological advances? Does it have the right skills and is it empowered to participate? If not, how can productivity be expected to be measured?

If you ask me, the biggest barriers to technology adoption will be a combination of a lack of skills and training, not knowing where and how best to use a specific technology, resistance to change, organizational culture and a lack of support from leadership roles.

My view is reinforced by BT’s annual Future in 2021 study, conducted in collaboration with YouGov and interviewing 1,217 businesses throughout the UK. It found that the top challenges businesses face in their adoption of the latest technologies are resistance to change and a lack of internal skills. Similar limitations were exposed in a CCS Insight survey conducted in 2021 in collaboration with Red Hat, a subsidiary of IBM.

IBM Flexes Its Credentials for Skills Evolution

IBM has long had a tradition of addressing the skills gap in the workspace. It’s a strategy that goes beyond altruism, even with the funding of various educational programmes and technology initiatives.

Programmes and competitions — such as Master the Mainframe, which sees ever-increasing numbers of young participants each year — demonstrate that IBM’s plan makes good business sense, sustaining business operations for the future. In October 2021, the company reinforced its commitment to prioritizing skills education and training by announcing an ambitious target of “providing 30 million people of all ages with new skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow by 2030”.

It’s a bold move that will see IBM use “existing programmes and career-building platforms to expand access to education and in-demand technical roles, supported by a clear road map with 170 new academic and industry partnerships”. Such action reflects how crucial development of skill sets has become in creating a workforce equipped to operate in the future economy, and for organizations and countries to adapt, thrive and evolve.

Skills Alone Won’t Cut It for Long-Term Growth

Our research repeatedly finds that organizational success is as much predicated on its workforce and culture as it is on its use of the latest technology. Put more starkly, no organization can expect to thrive in the digital economy in the long term if its workforce — particularly its leaders — not only lacks training and skills but also the culture to make use of digital advances.

When this happens on a larger scale throughout industries, it’s easy to see how productivity, economic growth and output can be suppressed at a national level. It’s a bleak outlook that limits opportunity and innovation, holding back long-term progression. If not addressed sufficiently, it will affect the economic output of a country and the way its citizens live, work, play and develop.

This integral challenge is reinforced by institutes such as the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Centre, which sees “economic growth as an important means to fuelling progress in social terms — including increasing well-being and equity — rather than increasing economic output as an objective in itself”. The economic growth of a country isn’t indicative of the well-being of its citizens. But it is a consistent measure by which to gauge general positioning for advanced development, productivity and long-term growth opportunities in comparison with other developed and developing markets.

Laying the Educational Groundwork for the Future Workforce

The UK, like many other developed nations, wants to ensure that it is developing a suitably skilled workforce for the growing digital economy — one that’s also resilient in the face of macroeconomics, increasing levels of automation, geopolitics and ecological impacts. There’s also a need for more diversity to meet shifting market dynamics and have greater levels of accountability.

To address these issues, governments need to provide funding and frameworks that will encourage industries to take a greater stake in providing the feedback loop into the education process. This means supporting initiatives that ensure everyone along the educational pipeline — from school-age students to those looking for a career change — can gain the skills to deliver what employers need. Doing so will allow them to build knowledge of tools and processes, be inspired to create, and maximize the full range of their capabilities.

Against this backdrop, there’s clear recognition that a better approach to the educational needs of secondary school students is needed. This is particularly the case for those in the formative age group of 13 to 18, when many start to think about their career options and gravitate to the relevant learning options.

Industry Partnerships Are a Vital Ingredient

At a national level, the skills gap in the UK is thwarted by several problems, not least politics and the need for funding. With that said, the options available to secondary school students are, for the most part, varied and served from many quarters. But concerns about availability, accessibility, quality, appropriateness for the different calibre of students and relevancy for the modern workplace create a highly charged debate among politicians, educators, parents and employers.

Irrespective of the breadth of qualification certificates and further education programmes available, a vital way forward is in providing the right mix of educational rigour with vocational flexibility and adaptability to meet the changing employment needs in light of technical advances and social trends.

Despite these problems, there are clear signs of a growing wave of partnerships to equip school students and beyond with skills and training alongside creativity. It’s an important start to answering the question of how to go about inspiring the next-generation workforce.

Many leading IT providers and consultancies have embarked on creating training programmes to help build digital skills among niches of the population, like mothers returning the workplace, ex-service veterans and people from non-technical professions. Several have gone further, with skills engagement programmes targeting school students. IBM is one such provider, with a skills and training push through a formal educational partnership programme, P-TECH, targeted at school students in the 11-to-18 age bracket.

A Different Approach to Inspiring the Next-Generation Workforce

P-TECH is billed as a pathway to technology, providing an educational model that looks to close the skills gap and prepare students for tomorrow’s jobs. It claims to offer a more rounded engagement model for schools and their students to address the skills most employers are looking for in a workforce equipped for digital operations and collaborations.

The principles underpinning the P-TECH programme focus on the mechanism of engagement for the supporting partner organizations and educational institutes, along with the method of delivery and the expected outcome for students. The partnership is formed of three parties, in the case of the UK, a publicly funded secondary school, a higher-education institution and an employer. Each provides expertise and capabilities as the source material for achieving the stated goal: an interview for successful graduates who embody traits eagerly sought after in the modern workforce.

The main role of each participant is well-defined, as is the trajectory of the programme. Schools provide students and the learning framework to support coursework; the employer partners offer real-world work experience and industry skills, and higher-education institutes offer a pathway to an industry-recognized degree-level qualification.

The P-TECH methodology focusses on providing a wealth of work and support services to supplement the formal qualifications acquired by students between the ages of 14 and 18 at school, also helping to inform and inspire younger pupils. Services include mentoring, lessons about work, workshops, industry speakers, workplace site visits, projects set by employer partners, and coding programmes. There is also the opportunity for paid internships and strong consideration of the students for any employment opportunities. On completion, a range of outcomes open: direct employment, free higher-level apprenticeships and recognized educational qualifications at degree or national-equivalent level.

A Balance between Soft and Hard Skills

With P-TECH, IBM is answering the call for young people seeking to obtain the right skills for the evolving world of work.

The general push for skill sets based on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is clearly important. This becomes even more apparent when you consider how these disciplines collectively underpin many of the technical and biological innovations that drive the economies of the developed world today. But the P-TECH model doesn’t just focus on these subjects; it weaves in creativity and soft skills, along with greater appreciation for humanities skills, including the ability to assimilate, evaluate, analyse, mediate, present and communicate complex information clearly.

Crucially, the programme offers a workplace learning curriculum for schools that support the principles of leadership, taking ownership, creative problem-solving, adaptability and teamwork. For industry partners, it provides a positive long-term engagement with educational establishments, and the ability to participate in the local and national agenda of preparing young people to be work-ready for a more digitized economy.

In a digital world that relies on pervasive communication, constant interaction and the generation of vast amounts of data, accurate reflections and reasoned critical thinking add to the variety of skills that support creativity in product and service creation and process improvements. Just look at the example provided by Sir Jonathan Ive, once Apple’s chief design officer, whose design creativity was just as instrumental in the success of the iPhone as those who developed the technology behind it.

Sustainability Means Thinking of the Children

We’re seeing a concerted effort by technology companies to make their operations more sustainable, with a greater focus on environmental, social and corporate governance policies. Ultimately, corporate accountability and sustainability means more than ecological initiatives; it must encompass diverse skills, education, jobs and well-being — all of which, as I mentioned earlier, have a social and economic impact.

The P-TECH programme isn’t the only educational initiative that IBM has developed. SkillsBuild is a free online learning platform with tools developed for students, educators and job-seekers. Learners can acquire Credly badges, which are digital representations of a learning outcome, experience or competency that can be shared and verified online. The content is from world-leading organizations including The Open University, Udemy, Adobe and many others. Working with non-profit organizations, these collaborators provide experiential virtual bootcamps to bring the content to life.

IBM isn’t alone in developing educational services to support all manner of participants. Salesforce is custodian of the highly successful Trailhead programme, a free online learning platform imparting digital technology and business skills to anyone of any age. Microsoft is a veteran in delivering educational support services. Google, Amazon Web Services and many others are continuing to invest in centres for teaching vital technology skills to the broadest range of people.

However, IBM’s approach stands out by addressing skills beyond the typical focus on STEM, and engaging with all those who have a vested interest, doing so at a crucial junction. The most recent sign-up to its P-TECH programme in the UK, announced in October 2021, is the Twyford Church of England (CofE) Academies Trust’s fourth school, the Ada Lovelace CofE High School.

A Fitting Heritage for Ada Lovelace

It’s fitting that IBM chose a school named after Ada Lovelace as the latest UK addition to its P-TECH programme. Born in 1815, she was the child of British poet Lord Byron and is credited as being the first computer programmer for her work with mathematician Charles Babbage, who built an analytical engine planned by Ada and capable of performing calculations using punch cards.

The school, in the creative and scientifically inquisitive spirit of its historical namesake, is working with IBM and its partners through the P-TECH and SkillsBuild programmes to offer students an educational environment that better reflects the diversity of talent, social skill sets and educational capacity of its student body. The commitment and enthusiasm shown by its leadership team — headed by Dame Alice Hudson, Mr Keir Smith and Mrs Emma Harniman — comes from their philosophy that unifying art, humanities, music and science presents a training path more relevant to the world of work. It’s a recognition of a growing movement that believes an interdisciplinary approach is more appropriate for tackling real-world challenges. It’s certainly more powerful in ensuring businesses are better-equipped to thrive in the digital economy.

The future workforce must rely on individuals with a broad set of skills, one that helps them to tackle the challenges facing businesses, determine what can be done to progress and meet greater expectations. IBM understands the need to work with others to resolve the skills gap with a school-centric learning framework, and this highlights the vital role tech suppliers like it can play.