I read something today in the humorous and fictional “DPM’s diary” section on the back of Computer Weekly magazine which related to why the “young of today” are not taking IT at A Level and it had a strange amount of truth to it… I quote:

<…snip>
Anyway, we were in the “what is wrong with the young of today?” mode of a Daily Mail editorial, discussing the next generation this evening. In particular why the lazy hooligans are not taking IT at A Level. Some thought it was because it was too difficult, but I think it is in fact the very reverse.

Let’s face it, any kid who has grown up net-savvy is going to know more about IT than anyone they are likely to meet this side of a white-board.

Bright kids drop out of A-Level IT, or have the sense not to do it in the first place, because all they are asked to do is write essays describing different types of databases. Meantime they are sitting in front of state-of-the-art desktops they built themselves writing code that can bring down the US defence network.
<snip…>

Now, I’m not going to blow my own trumpet by saying I’m “bright” necessarily, but I have a GCSE in IT, an A Level in IT and a degree in Computer Science, and I have spent my entire working life (all 4 years of it!) with software, hardware and everything in between, so I feel that I have a certain gift when it comes to computers, but sure enough, I received grade B for GCSE IT and grade C for A Level IT. Why didn’t I get grade A for both?

I always knew the reason really, but had never realised that someone else knew the reason as well! It’s written there in Computer Weekly magazine as clearly as ever – because IT qualifications are rarely actually about IT skills in a real-world sense!

I’m sure the GCSE, A Level and degree have given me vital skills that perhaps I use subconsciously, or maybe they’ve given me a baseline for the fundamentals of computing, but during all the summer jobs I’ve had, the 2 years working on the university IT Helpdesk part-time, and the several years i’ve now worked full-time I have never knowingly used a skill that was taught to me during any of these qualifications!

Well, actually, a few of the skills that were taught to me I have used, but I already knew those subjects inside-out before they were taught to me, so they don’t count!

Basically, I think IT qualifications, at least in my day, were not that great for a career in IT – my GCSE taught word processing, spreadsheets and database design with huge emphasis on the accompanying documentation (i.e. why you chose this particular design, why the other design options aren’t good etc…) and the A Level was much of the same. The trouble was I never really got on with that – I couldn’t see the point of writing a whole load of junk about why “Options 1-4″ were rubbish, and “Option 5″ was amazing – I just wanted to go ahead and implement “Option 5″ straight away because it was obviously the best, and that’s what I did… it’s obvious why I scored so low… but should things be changed to have more emphasis on the implementation? In my opinion, YES! I agree, there are some corporations who go through a proper “plan, design, implement, evaluate” cycle complete with all the documentation, but I have never been part of one – so far in life, I have just implemented, and maybe I’m in a unique role, but to be honest, I quite like it!