IT education in UK schools

22nd September 2025

How is IT being taught, what could be improved and why does it matter?

I didn’t enjoy IT in school, which you might think strange considering where I work today. We seemed to only be taught things like Microsoft Office, which may have been important but weren’t particularly engaging, particularly at that age.

Additionally, the students were more knowledgeable than the teachers a lot of the times, leading to tasks being completed in the first few minutes of class and the next hour being spent playing games and messing around. To be clear, these teachers were just doing their best, it wasn’t their fault they hadn’t be given the knowledge and tools to teach the subject effectively.

Overall, I found the subject unengaging and dull – I wish I hadn’t. If I had, I’d have a lot more IT skills today. We are currently facing a digital literacy gap, and I think a lot of it has to do with poor IT education – I’m fairly IT savvy thanks to my job, but I know a lot of people who struggle because they were never taught how to deal with IT.

By improving IT education, we can spark a love for the subject at a young age, which will lead to students going into more IT based careers, which will help to bridge the IT skills gap businesses are facing. But how can we accomplish this?

First, we need to look at how IT is currently being taught today (as my school days were some time ago!). Since the introduction of the computing curriculum in 2014, computing is now mandatory for students aged 5 to 16 in England, with similar frameworks in place across the UK.

However, only 11% of students in England take GCSE Computer Science, despite 70% of schools offering it as an option. Furthermore, only 9% of A-level Computer Science students are female, showing a gender imbalance on top of general disinterest.

Teacher confidence is also a concern, with a Royal Society survey* finding that 44% of secondary school teachers only felt confident teaching the early stages of the curriculum, while 26% had no computing related professional development in the past year.

All these points reflect what I experienced as a student: unfocused classes that only provide the basics, without the right level of teaching, resulting in students losing interest. So, how would we recommend making improvements?

Broaden the curriculum: IT is a widespread subject – try to teach a little of everything so that students have basic knowledge in multiple fields. Also, if, for example, a student has no interest in using Excel but loves coding, it means that they get to find their passion.

Increase funding: IT is an expensive subject, but investment in high quality equipment, software and teachers will result in more productive lessons. The return on investment will come when these students land jobs in the IT world and help to fill much needed job roles.

Make IT mandatory: the best way to ensure IT skills are learnt it to make it a requirement, like English and Maths. Considering how essential IT is to our everyday lives – I use a computer as much as anything else – this could be worth implementing.

By making these steps, the UK could significantly improve IT education, leading to better digital literacy and a more competent workforce in a world that is relying more and more on tech.

If you’d like to ask us any further questions, please contact Interfuture Systems.

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*https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/computing-education/computing-education-report.pdf