“Today, 90% of all jobs are expected to require at least a basic level of ICT skills, said Marianne Thyssen, the EU Commissioner in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility.”
In October 2015 15 EU countries have coding in their curricula: Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and the UK. For specific levels of education coding is even compulsory in some countries (mainly as a part of computer courses). In Denmark, for example, basic coding knowledge is a compulsory part of physics, chemistry and maths curricula. Slovakia went a srep further and they have integrated programming at all levels of school as compulsory element!
“In five years’ time, 825.000 jobs may be unfilled, simply because employers cannot find people with the right digital skills,” said Günther Oettinger, the EU Commissioner in charge of the Digital Economy & Societ
Why introducing coding in schools?
40% of the EU population has insufficient digital skills and that is a real problem, says Andrus Ansip, a former Prime Minister of Estonia who assumed office for almost ten years – from 2005 to 2014. Most modern jobs has the requirement of at least basic ICT knowledge, including coding.
If we look further on in statistics, only 25% of students are taught by digitally confident and supportive teachers with access to ICT, and 40% of businesses encounter difficulties in recruiting ICT professionals. This is a real cause for concern, and things are getting worse, as we see that education systems are currently slow to react to increased market demand for people with digital skills (more …).
Doing a career in for example architecture, engineering, accountancy and medicine, will soon require basic knowledge of coding skills. European Commission stats that 120.000 new jobs are created each year. If the whole system fails to fill this gap, Europe can face the shortage of more than 800.000 skilled ICT workers by 2020. Coding is becoming a part of the mainstream, not just a realm of some computer geeks.
The answer is simple, says Günther Oettinger, the EU Commissioner in charge of the Digital Economy & Society, Europe needs to get serious about digital skills, for each and every person, and each and every business to thrive in our digital economy and society (more …).
Leaving the employment gap aside, there is another view of learning to code in schools. Maybe more important. Learning to code also develops many other useful skills like: problem solving, critical thinking, logical reasoning, … Read more about coding benefits in a previous blog: “Why you should learn to code”. Schools are a very important player in introducing coding to children and students in a friendly way and trying to break down all the stereotypes about “programming is only for geeks”.
Also we at Enkronos are trying to contribute to the system! So if you are a student searching for experience or just a coding geek willing to explore new things you can write us and we can discuss about possible options. Maybe YOU can teach us something new. Why not?
Špela Mermolja
Business Assistant
Enkronos d.o.o.
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