School digitalization is finally getting the attention it deserves!

Digitization Skills supply

Last week, a solid proposal for a digitization strategy. Today, clear messages from leading school representatives from both blocs. Politicians and the education sector are now starting to get the message about digitalization.

Last week, the Swedish National Agency for Education presented another part of the work to, on behalf of the government, develop a digitization strategy for schools. A proposal for a vision and associated strategy divided into five areas was presented. The initial vision and strategy formulations are exemplarily concise and, for being written in "Skolverkska", reasonably clear. With a little benevolent editing, the five areas are as follows:

  1. Programming and digital skills to be included in the curriculum
  2. Principals and teachers to improve their digital skills
  3. Everyone in school should have access to good tools (hardware, infrastructure)
  4. Both teaching and administration should make use of the possibilities of digitalization (methods, systems, learning materials)
  5. The strategy will be monitored and support research

The strategy is to be fully rolled out by 2022. This may seem a long way off, but it can be interpreted as the last tail being on board. The important measures must be implemented immediately.

For IT&Telecom companies, and for the working group under our IT Competence Council that has worked on the issue, leadership has been the most important issue. It receives a great deal of attention in the strategy proposal, e.g. through wording that digital competence should become a mandatory part of headteacher training. However, its importance cannot be overemphasized.

The fact that the digitalization of schools has now been given the priority it requires became very clear at the breakfast seminar on the IT skills shortage that IT&Telekomföretagen and Business Region Göteborg jointly organized this Friday morning at Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg. The seminar was attended by two leading school policy representatives from the two blocs, Gothenburg politician Cecilia Dalman Eek (S) and the Moderates' education policy spokesperson Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.

Yours truly started with a presentation on the skills shortage (see below), where I concluded by highlighting the actions we want to see in the field of schools: Leadership, programming and collaborative efforts in the style of Next Up. This was followed by testimonies from industry representatives Hamid Samadi from Solid Beans and Barbro Lien Rönn from Hogia, who together emphasized the importance of investing in innovation, programming early in school and collaborative efforts with companies.

In the subsequent discussion with the politicians, Cecilia Dalman Eek emphasized the importance of leadership, where she highlighted a Vinnova-supported project in which 30 principals in the Gothenburg region receive a skills boost in how to teach programming. Camilla Waltersson Grönvall, for her part, was pleased to note that her party and fellow Alliance members have now wholeheartedly "got the message" about the importance of digitization for schools, and both politicians stressed the importance of programming early in school and promoting collaborative efforts of various kinds between schools and businesses - not just limited to internships.

The Swedish National Agency for Education has not yet presented the question of how programming will be included in curricula and syllabuses - it will be presented on June 30 - but the agency has already flagged that it will be baked into mathematics and physics subjects. Camilla Waltersson Grönvall is critical of this and thinks it should be a separate subject. However, the IT Competence Council's working group is doubtful about this; the important thing is (as stated in the letter we submitted to the Swedish National Agency for Education in December 2015) that programming and other digital (creative) skills are widely incorporated into many subjects, and more importantly, that teachers develop their skills in this area.

The gender issue also received its fair share of attention at the breakfast meeting, where participants from the newly formed network SystemTjej (with former Next Up team leader Sarah Söderberg as founder) called for more company-wide efforts to get girls into the IT professions.

As a result of the great interest in the skills issue we experienced today, BRG and IT&Telekomföretagen will invite you to a follow-up seminar focusing on higher education later in the spring - stay tuned and follow both organizations!