Re-thinking the Tech Industry’s Role in High School Education

The integration of technology education into Australian schools has come a long way, and fast. Extended COVID-19 lockdowns forced schools to rapidly adopt the technology required to facilitate online learning – a move that threw students, parents and educators into the deep end, all at once. Yet despite their heroic efforts, we are still seeing significant gaps in both educators’ and students’ digital fluency.

But should the burden of professional development and bringing relevant tech into the classroom fall on the shoulders of overworked and under-resourced staff? Absolutely not.

Almost half of the 787 school principals surveyed in the Australian Education Union's State of Our Schools 2020 national survey experienced teacher shortages in 2020. Yet more than a third of the nearly 10,000 teachers who responded to the survey felt that “reducing [their] workload would be the most effective approach for retaining the workforce.”

It’s the ultimate Catch-22.

Technology is an ever-changing and complex landscape. It’s an industry with an exponential change curve. Teachers don’t learn it at university, and they certainly don’t have time to keep up with the changes in Web3 and crypto-currencies every day. So how can we possibly expect them to be maximising kids’ tech literacy years later?

Employers tell us that students are still graduating high school, and even university, lacking basic tech knowledge they need for the future workforce. Yet rather than a lack of technical skills, the biggest shortage we see at HEX – when we deliver tertiary-accredited innovation and entrepreneurship programs – is a confidence and digital fluency shortage.

We see students with game-changing ideas desperate to make a difference, who simply ‘don't know what they don't know’. There's a huge gap between ‘I want to build a website or app’ and what they realise is actually within their grasp. The good news is, you don't have to be a tech geek – and you don't have to code in Python or Ruby.

Good ‘old-fashioned capabilities’ like communication, curiosity and cross-curricular teamwork are critical for tech and tech-adjacent roles. Even some of the fun things that children do daily can prepare them for a tech career.

Love playing Roblox? You might have a future as an experience designer or a metaverse architect (yes, those are real jobs). Using Discord in gaming? It’s really similar to Slack, which is used in thousands of workplaces. Scrolling TikTok? You’re getting an education in multimedia content production.

Whatever it is that a student loves to do, whether it’s fine arts, languages, cooking, or sport, there is technology out there to support them in it. This is the foundation of a modern tech career.

The knowledge gap is not necessarily in x or y platform; the external landscape is changing too quickly. Today’s kids need to foster agile mindsets, with a digital fluency that helps them to adopt new tech capabilities on the fly.

So how do we embed this into classrooms?

We can start by embracing research and government changes to curriculum. Projects such as ACARA’s Digital Technologies in Focus (DTiF), a Government program designed to upskill teachers to teach Digital Technologies, and the new Digital Skills Organisation / McCrindle model for digital skills development will help shape the education system and ‘boost industry confidence in the quality of graduates’.

But there could be more direct and impactful ways to upskill students and empower teachers, simultaneously.

Bring industry leaders into classrooms
Imagine educators working alongside tech industry leaders and practitioners to help bridge the knowledge gaps between school and the workplace. There is a high willingness from tech leaders to ‘pay it forward’ and educate early to address the enormous talent gap for their future workforce. At HEX, we bring in engineers and designers from companies like Atlassian to directly mentor and educate students – so they’re learning straight from the source.

Create a central hub of content and expertise
Imagine an open-source pool of up-to-date knowledge, curated by industry (relevance), aligned to curriculum (credibility), and translated into content for and by young people (TikTok energy). At HEX, we refresh our tech content monthly, but we’d love to see this at scale! The Tech Council of Australia boasts some of the world’s leading tech companies as members (like Canva) and could be a wonderful source for a hub like this.

Technology literacy is now expected, but the application and fast adoption of new tech – digital fluency – is now key. Young people need to be able to harness tech creatively, powerfully and quickly, in order to drive change. Driving digital fluency is a challenge that must be owned jointly by industry and educators.

So as schools face very real staff (and in particular, STEM) shortages, I look forward to seeing the creative new ways we deeply connect educators and industry to empower the future generation of tech leaders.

Jeanette Cheah is the founder and CEO of HEX, an award-winning edtech company delivering internationally recognised innovation and entrepreneurship programs to university students and the next generation of talent. A globally in-demand corporate keynote speaker and panelist, she is also a guest lecturer and mentor at universities around Australia and an advocate for tech inclusion and diversity in business worldwide.