"Many girls in our class have started thinking about IT before choosing a high school"

On Tuesday morning, together with the City of Stockholm, we organized a breakfast seminar on the Next Up project. On the podium were the Mayor of Stockholm, Lotta Edholm, the Vice President of the Swedish Teachers' Union, Johan Törnroth, and industry representatives Elin Frejd from Academic Work and Jenny Visén from Sogeti.

However, the ones who stole the show were 14-year-old students Tobias Carlsson and Linnea Forsberg. They attend Källtorpsskolan in Järfälla, which is one of the ten schools taking part in the competition. They told us that the competition has created a great deal of enthusiasm among all the pupils, and that they have already opened their eyes to IT as a future profession. Linnea said that there are many girls in her class, and that "everyone has started thinking about IT for their high school choices". As you can see on the webcast (from the 19th minute), they produced a string of grateful statements ("...getting an insight into what it really is, can attract people to choose IT... more people have become much more involved...") and we assure you that we did not serve them any script...

I started by giving the background, where IT is unfortunately almost the worst at attracting girls, even compared to other technical programs. I then briefly presented the project itself. In the subsequent panel discussion, Lotta Edholm, among others, mentioned the challenges of getting everyone, both school students and also many adults, to realize that Stockholm and Kista are an important high-tech hotspot that needs a lot of skills. Johan Törnroth highlighted the problem of raising technology in schools; that there is a lack of technology teachers and that technology is mostly seen as "operation" and not as development and creation.