'Schools have a role' in IT training

17:41 13th June 2008

Schools have a responsibility to prepare children for IT jobs in the IT industry, according to a leading academic.

With the IT industry currently experiencing a skills shortage, children should be encouraged to seek IT careers in order to plug the gap, said Wendy Hall, former chairwoman of the British Computer Society (BCS) and new president of the US Association of Computing Machinery.

She told VNU Net: "The skills shortage needs to be tackled at all levels, starting with the way IT is taught in schools and through the transitions between school, university and work."

School girls especially should be educated about the benefits of IT jobs as women only make up 16 per cent of the IT workforce, according to reports.

"Women are just as interested as men in social networking and areas like e-health - caring via technology - are really appealing to women. We need to start teaching this stuff in schools," said Ms Hall.

Figures from the BCS revealed that less than 30 per cent of academic and research staff in IT and computer science university departments are female.

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