Why should businesses support IT growth in Australian schools?

The current growth rate of the Australian IT sector is at an all time high, with current predictions from top accounting firm Deloitte showing an increase of 150% in mobile application development, this year alone. This growth of the IT sector has seen a significant spike in the IT job market; the problem that come with this is the Australian workforce does not have the large number of skilled IT workers to fill these roles.

Over the past 20 years Australia’s main source of income has come from mining. The decline of the mining industry, has left us with an over supply of workers whose skills are more suited for the "resources" industry. The Australian government, in 2013 commissioned several large research papers to establish where the main economic growth would occur in Australia. The results came back with the IT sector having the highest growth. The paper produced by PWC and Google found that the start up industry had the potential to contribute $109 billion or 4% of GDP to the Australian economy and around 540,000 jobs would be added to the market within the next 20 years.

The predicament over the next 20 years is how can we create a workforce who will be skilled in these roles? In 2014 the government introduced the education program called STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The program was introduced to make sure students are taught basic math and science skills. In 2015 a global OECD test was given to schools. The results had Australian primary schools rank 14th in the world for math and science. Countries located in East Asia, Singapore and Western Europe has made STEM an integral part of their curriculum for years and the first 5 countries on the list were from Asia. The government gave $14 million dollars in funding to the STEM program. With over 4000 schools in Australia this amount of money can only contribute a small percentage of what is needed. This is where Australian businesses need to step in.

David Sparrius co-owner of Melbourne based recruitment agency Milestone Information Technology has said “it's important that we support the emergence of technology for the children. If the government aren’t going to do it, it's up to business leaders to take the reign.” Milestone IT has recently donated ten 3D printers to local schools.

Several non-for-profit organisations have been created outside of the school system to teach IT skills. Last Wednesday Code Club broke a world record with its national event called “Moonhack” which coincided with the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It saw 10,207 primary and secondary year students take part in a simultaneous coding event. The courses that are available for the students are designed and taught by IT professionals who volunteer their time to teach our future talent.

Miles Tran, who is the other owner of Milestone Information Technology believes companies which utilise IT services or have technology as an integral part of their BAU, should acknowledge the grass roots of the problem, which is the current education system.

Overall we need to create an IT community within Australia that works together to build the industry. If both government and businesses work as a team to promote and up skill our workforce, there will be no problem in keeping our IT companies and jobs within Australia