Skills gaps will widen if ageism persists

August saw the latest A-level and GCSE results arrive to the usual cries of dumbing down. Both sets of pass rates rose from last year. At GCSE level, 97.6 percent of all entries were passes; while for A-levels the proportion reached 96.2 percent.

The results led to warnings from some business leaders that despite the high scores on paper, current school leavers are not being equipped with basic skills. But while British industry concerns itself with the alleged failure of the education system to provide it with a literate and numerate workforce, there are other worrying signs for the future of the IT sector.

The latest figures from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority indicate that fewer pupils are signing up for IT A-levels each year. There were 22,125 entries for computer-related A-levels this year, down from 23,876 last year. This is the third year in a row that the numbers have dropped. So while some question the value of GCSEs and A-levels as the overall pass rate continues to edge up each year, a more pressing concern for IT employers should be where to turn to for their future staff. If schools and colleges are failing to attract students at the A-level stage, it’s likely universities are having just as difficult a job encouraging undergraduates into technology subjects, and so the number of IT experts entering the workforce each year will drop off.

This problem is likely to be compounded by the predicted growth in offshoring. As firms take advantage of IT outsourcing services in emerging overseas markets such as Eastern Europe and China, the impact on the UK workforce could be a shortage of IT staff at the management level.

If more lower-level IT roles such as support and application development are sent offshore, then there will be fewer IT professionals working their way up the technology career ladder in the UK. This might result in firms also needing to look to their overseas partners to help fill higher-level, management roles within the IT department.

A possible solution to these problems could actually be forced on firms next year, with the introduction of new age discrimination legislation. As of 2006, it will be illegal for firms to base their recruitment drives on age criteria – a change that could have a huge impact on the technology sector. According to the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (Atsco), “there is a deep-rooted culture in IT of expecting people to be young, which will have to change”. Atsco’s warning came as it emerged that the traditional graduate milk rounds, relied on by so many large organisations for recruitment and more importantly to identify future managers, could be banned under the new law as most university leavers are in their early twenties.

As the traditional pools of new employees – the colleges and universities – get shallower, smart firms will refresh their IT recruitment programmes now to make sure they’re top of the pile for the next – and older – generation of IT employees. Companies could supplement these efforts by investing more now in programmes to train their current technology staff for more skilled roles, rather than looking outside their organisations to fill skills gaps.

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