The problem with ICT is that children are bored to death by it. It's largely office skills and the UK's inadequate proxy for computer science. Children don't need to spend a year learning PowerPoint. It's absolutely worthless for anyone trying to build a career in the digital industries. It's teaching children how to use applications, not how to make them.
What is needed is a rigorous and relevant computer science curriculum. By the age of 16 they should be able to write a program that creates something like a Sudoku puzzle. By 18 they should be able to write their own programming language.
We are probably the most creative nation in the world. Faced with a world in which they will be surrounded by computers and the opportunities they create, Britain's schoolchildren deserve the chance to study computer science to give them the skills to create the next Google, Twitter, Facebook or Zynga.
I think it's right that the Department for Education is looking to industry, organisations and learned societies to help build a replacement curriculum in computer science – rather than trying to do something they don't understand and repeat the mistakes of the past.
We're going to ask for the DfE to back a teacher training programme for computer science teachers, and at the same time to provide continuing professional development for ICT teachers.
We're in an era where computer science is the new Latin. Just as Latin underpinned so many things, computer science is not just about programming, it's about computational thinking, problem solving, analytics, physics and creating code. Building digital content and intellectual property. Building value in the digital economy.
We need to make computer science relevant to children and show them how the subject can help them create amazing content – and a lot of money, for themselves and for the country.
The important thing is to start and make sure we don't fall behind the rest of the world. Some of the most important intellectual properties to date have come out of Israel and Finland – and guess what? Both these countries have computer science on the curriculum. It's the lingua franca of how business is done today.