71% of students learn more about IT at home than school

The article didn't say where in the education system the surveyed students fell, but as a highschool student in the US I know this is definitely true. The majority of the students who attend the school I go to, which is actually pretty equipped in terms of modern computers, know more than the teachers do about how to use computers (and I'm not talking about updating a status on facebook). Sure, there are outliers, like the few teachers who do program in their spare time, and the few students who don't really know how to do anything with their computers, but my statement stands.

As to learning about IT at school versus at home, I know that I learned more about computers at home but other students really didn't know much about computers until we were lent them by our school and used them in the classroom.

I would guess that technically savvy (I mean really savvy) people are much better compensated outside of the education system.

I'd be curious how many readers on this site would even consider a teaching career. Personally, I'd love to teach, but lets face it, the pay just isn't that great.

I have found from my own experience that ICT teaching is quite shoddy, and a waste of time at best. This has been confirmed by accounts from friends and family at other schools.

Most teaching revolves around the ability to use certain microsoft products (Word, Excel, Outlook and Access if you're "lucky"). In some cases, they may even teach you Dreamweaver. I remember one lesson being taught to create websites in Dreamweaver - we were told to use tables to design the website, told off for viewing the HTML or heck, even changing the view mode so that each panel was a window.

I trialled (and have friends and family at different schools that actually did) a GCSE ICT exam, and I was somewhat bemused at a program that simulated XP, in which the purpose was to do a number of tasks (designated by an Outlook lookalike program) such as create a database, write a word document etc. The program would record every mouse click and keystroke, whilst timing how fast you did each task.

It depresses me that that is what people regard as computers in this day and age. The teachers were often primarily of another subject (Art, for example), and refused to teach at a rate faster than "don't you DARE press OK in that alert! Has everyone got that alert? Right! Now press OK!".

I also find this disappointing:

“There is confusion between teaching IT, and using IT as part of the learning process,” Mr Fish said.

This seems to be very fashionable in many schools across the UK. I have no idea why - is French better taught through the medium of computers? Does the use of interactive whiteboards really increase productivity and ability to learn - or even attentiveness amongst pupils? Certainly Maths and English were not helped by an increase in technology, at least in my opinion. And exactly what are the pupils learning about IT in the process?

When top CS departments across the UK scorn ICT/IT A Levels/GCSEs, and in some cases appear to treat them as anti-requisites (Cambridge list ICT as a soft subject and I remember Oxford jokingly say at an open day that they look at candidates more favourably if they hadn't been taught ICT before), and when they don't appear to be teaching pupils anything that will be much use in the workforce (or rather, stuff that they don't already know that will be any use in the workforce) - what exactly is the point?

Another way to look at this:

If you come to the Thai market with knowledge of technologies that allow you to execute better and faster than the locals, you might have an advantage.

Right, you can be "average", but "average" in CS lies between "Programmers" and "Senior Citizens". Average programmers aren't really programmers, they're just people who combine prewritten chunks of code without proper understanding of it.

"Programmers" have to be doing side projects, otherwise they re no better than an artist who only paints for money, or a musician who only plays for shows.