Diarmuid Ó Muirgheasa Managing Director @ The Digital Skills Gap Diarmuid Ó Muirgheasa Managing Director @

What I do Managing Director at the Academy of Code Coding classes for kids from 2nd class up to 6th year Lecturing IT and Information Systems in DIT Aungier St. Formerly a consulting software developer

Why? Original motivation – what I would have wanted at that age More recently we’re demand led (Parents really want their kids to learn about IT/coding)

Big Picture Unstated aim: we are addressing the digital skills gap (both sides – we’ll come back to that)

Let’s define that Convenient to talk about general skills v specific skills General skills: user skills; copy and paste; ctrl-F; saving a file; broad IT literacy Specific skills: programming; database admin; digital marketing; design; etc

Let’s talk about general skills first

What do we mean by a general skills gap? Keyboard and mouse skills Copying and pasting Undo Caps Lock Saving a file to a USB stick Retrieving a previously save file Etc. “Digital native” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot – I don’t buy it

What causes it? Generational experiences (1980-2002 was probably the golden age) Lack of IT in schools (we’ll segue in to that in a second…) Lack of parental influence

IT in schools We’re starting to see some movement on the ground Some primary school teachers will integrate Scratch into their lessons Some secondary schools offer decent transition year programs Real issues with IT in schools even where it is present (so-called – and wonderfully named – “Everest Syndrome”)

IT in schools (continued) You can’t pump money into schools and then move on Labs degenerate over time if not maintained Anecdotally there are lots of really poor “IT guys” working for schools Exacerbated by principals who are simply not competent to be making IT infrastructure decisions Teachers also a huge issue – you can’t solve a lifetime of being “not a computer person” with a weeklong course! Maths/science teachers shouldn’t be pressed into service as IT teachers

More specialised skills

Why? College courses not sufficiently attractive Gender imbalance puts off everyone (not just women) Dublin is an expensive place to live, without salaries to match – mobile skills eventually mobilise! IT salaries are often overstated (hard to know how much of an influence that has on supply of talent)

How do we address it? At the Academy of Code, we believe in giving kids access to “full fat” programming languages at an early age (ideally starting between 5th class and 1st year) Allow students to develop an interest in the subject long before college (Don’t ask them to commit to a 3-5 year degree before they’ve even tried coding!) This addresses both the general and the specialised side of things – no better way to learn those general skills than through attempting a complex task (like programming)

Scaling Up The Academy of Code will do a great job in South County Dublin – economics will make it harder for us (or any other company) to serve less affluent communities This needs to be happening in schools To get qualified tech workers into teaching, working conditions will need to improve Financial incentives at third level to address shortages of specialised skills

Diarmuid Ó Muirgheasa - @diarmuidom – Diarmuid@theacademyofcode.com Questions? Diarmuid Ó Muirgheasa - @diarmuidom – Diarmuid@theacademyofcode.com