London needs top coders to prevent losing out to global rivals

If Da Vinci were alive today, he would be learning to code says Decoded's Kathryn Parsons 
Kathryn Parsons10 April 2018

Never has the need to learn, re-skill and up-skill been more pressing at every age and stage of our lives.

And yet, the irony is that education is one of the least transformed sectors of industry that exists.

The way we learn and what we learn was invented for the world we lived in 100 years ago and although we should be proud that the UK has made coding mandatory on the national curriculum, what we really need is an education revolution, not an evolution.

Code is a powerful tool, one which lets you create and solve problems in a digital age (even the artificial intelligence age).

The most seismic shifts in history have happened when simple but powerful tools have been put in the hands of human beings, which allow them to communicate and create; the invention of speech, language, writing… the worldwide web, smartphones, code and AI.

We are living in a renaissance, and I am certain that if Leonardo da Vinci were alive today he would be learning to code.

This year, the Prime Minister announced at Davos the launch of the Institute of Coding. Led by the University of Bath, it has brought together more than 60 different organisations ranging from Future Learn and the Open University to IBM and Cisco to create a higher education place of learning for relevant business skills of the future.

But to be world-leading, we need more and we need it now.

Macron’s Tech Visa, Singapore’s training budgets for individuals, Canada’s huge investment in the Vector Institute — which aims to produce the largest number of data scientists — are all initiatives which demonstrate that any advantage we have as a tech hub could be quickly lost.

Decoded has been working with businesses globally, training them in data analytics and educating graduates, leadership teams and boards about emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing. What has struck me is a sense of urgency and speed.

Paris’s Ecole 42 offers an example. Privately funded by billionaire French tech entrepreneur and philanthropist and Xavier Niel, there are no fees for students.

There is no traditional academic requirement for entry, no curriculum and, wait for this, no teachers. It’s barely five years old and last year over 75,000 students applied for 1000 spaces. It is churning out tech trailblazers and has even opened a school in San Francisco — the French teaching Californians how to code? Quelle horreur!

We have similar initiatives here, except they are poorly invested in, badly communicated and simply not big or bold enough.

Personally, I would have loved to join a school like this when I was 18. I knew I wanted to start a business from the age of seven. Instead I studied Latin and Ancient Greek.

It was only after university that I discovered the languages of today’s digerati.

Let’s be more Leonardo and create an education masterpiece we can look back on in 100 years and be proud of.

Kathryn Parsons is co-founder of Decoded

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