Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a part of everyday life, from customer service chatbots, to autocomplete in Word documents.
Use cases for the technology are found everywhere, and some people are now even using AI to code using a practice called “vibe coding” whereby large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are used to generate code to match the user’s prompts describing system functionality or requirements. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, even recently claimed that up to 30% of the code in its internal GitHub repositories has been generated by AI.
But Philip Colligan, CEO of education charity Raspberry Pi Foundation, warns that the resulting shift in rhetoric around whether children really need to learn coding in the wake of this trend risks forgetting what skills learning to code brings with it.
Learning to code, Colligan argues, gives young people the skills that will help them utilise and develop AI going forward, especially as the rapid development of these technologies makes the future skills needs for their development uncertain.
“There are people out there right now making the argument that kids shouldn’t learn to code, and I think one of the reasons they’re doing it is they’re selling products,” Colligan says. “It’s really hard for schools to introduce computer science. The risk is that they hear a message that they’re wasting their time and then they’ll stop, and we know that [particularly in] low-resource schools, those kids will lose out.”
The shortage of appropriate tech skills is an ongoing battle in the UK, with some firms saying that a lack of talent is hindering their technology progress, while in other cases people don’t even have the basic digital skills for day-to-day life.
In 2014, the UK government reformed the computing curriculum, shifting the focus towards teaching children “computational thinking” and programming skills, while phasing out the old ICT curriculum in a bid to adapt to changing tech talent needs.
Computing has been a tricky subject for teachers since the introduction of the new curriculum in 2014, with many teachers claiming they do not have the confidence both in delivering subjects such as computing and using technology in the classroom.
“The overwhelming majority of computer science lessons are taught by a teacher who doesn’t have a degree in the subject – and that’s no criticism,” says Colligan.
Along with curriculum reforms, whether they involve embedding technology across all subject areas or not, Colligan makes a call to governments worldwide to invest in teachers’ skillsets, which in most cases teachers are being forced to work on themselves: “We need to make more time and give them more support to develop their own skills and so that they can keep up with the latest state of technology.”
“We need to think about how technology is infused right across the curriculum – and that’s one of the biggest challenges over the next few years”
Philip Colligan, Raspberry Pi Foundation
Despite having trouble teaching tech in schools already, there is currently a huge focus on encouraging children to pursue AI careers in the future, says Colligan, but AI skills could mean a number of things, including knowledge of cyber security, data analysis and machine learning, all of which coding would be a useful baseline skill for.
Colligan says there’s no doubt the curriculum needs updating, but the issue is that it’s difficult for the education system to keep pace with technology when it’s always evolving. He proposes a twofold approach instead, where computer science – including topics such as AI – is a standalone subject for those who are interested in a future in the tech sector, but it also forms part of other lessons, thus integrating it more through the curriculum.
“We think it’s really important that computer science and AI literacy need to be across the curriculum,” he says. “We need to think about how technology is infused right across the curriculum, in the sciences, the humanities, the arts – and that’s one of the biggest challenges over the next few years.”
One way to do this is to teach children how to use computing to solve real-world problems that relate to each subject, with Colligan giving the example of using AI to map climate change as part of a geography class.
This, in turn, helps kids to understand what working in technology could involve, making it more accessible and relevant, especially to groups who are currently underrepresented in the tech industry – something Raspberry Pi Foundation’s own research previously confirmed.
The more subjects include real-world applications of tech, Colligan says, “the more you inspire girls and kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to think it’s relevant to them, so it really helps solve the diversity issue that we’ve seen over the years with computer science”.
The industry is steadily recognising that encouraging people from diverse backgrounds into tech is increasingly important in the age of AI, where a lack of diversity in development teams can lead to bias being built into systems – something even children are concerned about, according to recent research from InnovateHer.
This is why the budding narrative that kids no longer need to learn to code is especially concerning, says Colligan, as it will “concentrate the power to shape the world through technology into a smaller group of people”, adding: “The kids who learn to code will be the ones who shape the future that we all live in.”
