A Digital Skills Select Committee report to the House of Lords in February estimated that 35% of UK jobs would be lost to automation in the next 20 years. It echoes the sort of thinking that Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee?s The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies predicts. Their answer is that you need to switch skills but to do this you need to switch the schools too.
Will Franks agrees. He saw when he launched his business in 2004 that a massive shortage in relevant skills can impede progress, so he was forced to look overseas. The same he says will happen with IoT unless we get schools and colleges to start gearing courses to meet the challenges of tomorrow?s automated economy.
It is a huge challenge and one which is a top three priority for Chi Onwuruh MP and Labour’s Digital Review. Digital inclusion, a data review and a focus on digital skills are she says essential.
Last July the Digital Skills Taskforce called for the Government to review skills development in schools and colleges. The Perkins Review in November last year also called for a review into developing engineering skills to boost the UK economy.