As I write this, I’m on my way home from Liverpool. Every part of my trip has been digital, from train tickets to card payment-only hotels to booking taxi journeys around the city. So when we hear that digital skills are lacking, it is hard not to be sceptical. And yet.
Despite our pervasive familiarity with devices, there remain millions of people across the UK who don’t have the skills to get by. From older people who long for when they could visit their bank branch to those who struggle to navigate online forms, people are increasingly being disadvantaged by the modern world.
Our third core skill
Being digitally savvy allows us to access the best deals for shopping and utility bills. It opens the door to more lucrative jobs. It brings us greater awareness on health matters and it even broadens our social circles. And not being digitally savvy increasingly means missing out on all of that.
This is why digital skills are becoming the third core skill alongside English and maths. Indeed, way back in 2015 the House of Lords Select Committee on Digital Skills stated children should be taught “digital literacy” as a core skill.
The report also highlighted that universities should ensure all graduates are “digitally competent” and apprenticeships should have greater emphasis on digital skills. It was written pre-lockdown, and with many routes now having a significant online element, it’s even more vital.
Rightly, English and maths are held up as crucial to social mobility. Increasingly, the same can be said of digital skills. Every learner simply must have a grasp of more than the basics.
The new normal
As digital becomes normalised, colleges and apprenticeship providers are adapting by assessing the skills needs of their learners at the beginning of their journey. This ensures they can be supported and able to access their course and resources.
However, the misconception persists that digital skills are an older person’s need, that younger people – on their phone all the time and online 24/7 – are ‘digital natives’. This not the case at all. Younger people may be more advanced in certain areas of digital devices, but this doesn’t mean they have the full skills to operate safely and effectively in the digital world.
When the Department for Education brought in the new basic digital skills standards, they created two qualifications: essential digital skills and digital functional skills. One is focused on digital skills for life, and the other for education and work. Though they both cover similar content, the key is in the detail.
More and more learning encompasses digital tools or platforms. But while this increases personalised learning and accessibility, it can also paradoxically create barriers for those without the required skills or tools.
I frequently hear about learners not engaging with resources or doing poorly in online assessments. Often, lack of subject knowledge is not the cause but poor digital skills blocking learners’ ability to engage with these platforms.
In fact, Ofqual recently highlighted in their functional skills review that learners being forced to take online assessments rather than paper-based ones was one of the reasons some were unsuccessful in their attempts to achieve their qualification.
No one left offline
In life, education and work, digital skills are the key to an improved way of living. However, we must resist the temptation to jump to artificial intelligence or augmented reality as the solution for all the world’s ills.
First and foremost, we must consider end users and whether they’re actually skilled enough to use them.
Digital skills are on every Local Skills Improvement Plan as a high need. If we’re going to meet those needs, then – in the same way as we must overcome ‘maths anxiety’ and ‘anti-maths attitudes’ – we must be brave enough to admit our digital skills are not where we need them to be as a nation.
And that means doing everything we can to bring everyone on board.
To learn more about NCFE’s No One Left Offline campaign, click here
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