How to move from talk to action to boost secondary school girls' interest in IT?

Most people who have spent more than a few minutes looking at the problem of getting young people, especially girls, interested in studying and working in IT will pretty much immediately come to the conclusion that it is too late to start engaging young people in secondary school. It is in primary school that the choice - or rejection - takes place, and it is all about identity: It does not matter how much you flaunt the fact that IT jobs are well-paid if they do not fit into young people's own ideas of self-realization. There have been a lot of PR-related own goals here, where the adult world thinks that as long as you show beautiful women with construction helmets, teenage girls will flock to engineering programs.

In order to tap into secondary school girls' sense of their own identity, personal encounters are needed. And this immediately becomes a challenge for all the "somebody else should do clubs" (Nannanism for those who have not heard: the firm belief that "someone else" should do something). Taking action requires an understanding of how primary schools operate, the formal requirements for their activities, how STEM subjects are taught and synchronized with other subjects, and what drives teachers, school management and, of course, pupils in the short and long term. The emergence of the IT industry and its desire to collaborate does not mean that everyone in the school world is dropping everything they have to meet the industry's long-term skills needs.

At IT&Telecom we have an idea at the embryo stage, where we could bridge the diverging interests and motivations of young people, school management and IT companies and arrive at a triple-win solution. But it requires humility and long-term commitment. Have you taken a few minutes to read this text?