Massive changes proposed to education to boost high-tech skills; art and computer science proposed for inclusion in new general education certificate.
Alongside tax breaks, reform of the UK’s education system has been at the top of developers’ agendas for some time. With the games industry making it clear that the vast majority of higher education courses in game development are failing to give students the skills they need, reports indicate that students lack the basic skills when they leave secondary school.
In 2010, the government commissioned a report from Ian Livingstone, British gaming luminary and life president of Eidos, and Alex Hope, managing director of Double Negative, the UK’s largest film-only special-effects company, to look at the problems facing their two industries. Today the pair launched that report, with two ministers there to support its conclusions.
The Livingstone-Hope report presents 20 recommendations across all levels of education. First among the recommendations for schools is that computer science be made an essential discipline in the ongoing National Curriculum review and that it–along with art–be included in the proposed English Baccalaureate (a general education certificate granted for high grades in certain subjects). The proposals for higher and further education involve increasing targeted funding for the best industry-accredited courses and giving prospective applicants easier access to information about employment prospects from individual courses.
Ed Vaizey, minister for culture, communications, and creative industries, welcomed the report’s content. “It’s not about resources; it’s about focus,” he said. “We can use this report to start a revolution,” he explained. This was particularly apt, he said, because the country was “skint,” and so a report that simply called for additional resources would fall on deaf ears. He seemed cooler on the plans to increase the importance of computer science, however, suggesting instead that it be treated “like music,” indicating that after-school clubs and access to facilities was more important than folding programming into the core curriculum.
John Hayes, minister for further education, skills, and lifelong learning, struck a different note. He too supported the conclusions of the report, suggesting that computer science should “permeate the whole curriculum.” He also emphasised the role industry had to play, detailing plans to reexamine level two and level three apprenticeships in the high-tech sector to ensure a high-quality flow of qualified people into the industries that needed them. He also contradicted Vaizey’s assertion that there was no money available, suggesting that money was there via the government’s innovation fund specifically to aid high-tech high-growth industries such as those under discussion.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot