Thousands of graduates needed to echo technology boom

A virtual meeting on the status of coding and robotics in South African educational institutions hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa has highlighted the need for higher education institutions to produce more graduates with the necessary skills and competencies in a sector with about 20,000 vacancies.

The event brought together the broader education ecosystem, from specialists in the coding and robotics sector to curriculum developers and advisers, schools, and university faculty experts, to discuss developments and responses on preparing learners to make the transition between school and university to the world of work armed with the requisite foundational skills.

Emma Dicks, a co-founder of CodeSpace Academy, an educational institution that specialises in teaching coding and software engineering, said the need for universities to create an effective pipeline for young people with computer-based skills ranges from those who develop software to users and managers of technology in the workplace.

“Our economy will flounder if the education system is not able to coordinate efforts to train young people with the skills that will support the growth of the IT sector,” she said.

“We need a range of different types of tertiary education [opportunities] to prepare for the different roles, and people to use, evaluate and create information, media and technology,” she said.

Dicks also highlighted that there were more than 20,000 vacancies for graduates with IT qualifications in South Africa. Organisations outsource more than 20% of work in relevant fields beyond borders due to a lack of qualified people in the labour force.

Jean Greyling, an associate professor in computing sciences at the Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha (formerly known as Port Elizabeth) in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, added that software developers remained among the most sought-after professionals on career junctions. However, millions of learners in the country remain unaware of these career paths.

Basic skills far below standard

On perspectives from higher education institutions, Professor Hussein Suleman, the acting director of the school of information technology and head of the department of computer science at the University of Cape Town, highlighted that programmes in information systems, computer sciences and software development required strong language, communication and mathematical skills.

“We need graduates who can build systems, build solutions and technology. We also need graduates who can design experiences that interface with people and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Higher education is responsible for the graduates we are going to produce to create that future we envision,” Suleman said.

While language and mathematical literacy skills are critical for students to enter IT fields at university level, research in South African schools revealed that 78% of learners in Grade 4 cannot read for meaning in any language and 61% of Grade 5 children cannot do basic mathematics.

Furthermore, the decreasing number of matriculants (school leavers) with good maths grades was another challenge for the software development and engineering fields.

While implementing coding and robotics is imminent, to ensure that further inequality is not entrenched into education systems, it is imperative for students to acquire the foundational skills needed to go into the IT industry.

Teachers need training, too

At the event, that took place at the end of April, Jonathan Freese, the chief education specialist (technology) at the department of basic education in the Western Cape province of South Africa, highlighted the need to give fundamental support and training to teachers in the coding and robotics fields.

Higher education institutions had contributed enormously towards the establishment of a digital skills curriculum. However, developing accredited coding and robotics courses for instructors was equally important, Freese said.

Universities could contribute through pre-service and in-service teacher training as well as post-graduate degrees in coding and robotics. The University of South Africa is one of the few institutions that developed a blended model of training in coding and robotics for teachers in line with the new curriculum.

Freese highlighted how coding and robotics were bringing solutions within sectors in Africa.

In Rwanda, a robotics drone was delivering blood and emergency medical supplies. In Ethiopia, robots have been designed to clean hospital wards and detect viruses. And in Botswana, drones are being used in agriculture to detect the beginning of diseases in plants.

“Computational thinking and engineering design process are the golden threads at the core of coding and robotics, and the ultimate aim of teaching these subjects is to assist learners to be globally relevant and employable,” Freese said.