The South African information technology (IT) industry needs to move quickly to save the industry’s skills pipeline or risk falling behind the world in terms of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) progress, says Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) vice-chairperson, 4IR Innovations director and nonprofit Ososayensi Education Advancement founder Senele Goba.

“There is an urgent need for support at school level. If we want more students to study IT, complete their courses and succeed in the industry, we need to support the subject in high school.

“Computer sciences at schools ensures students are exposed to IT prior to tertiary education. We need [the lack of IT in high schools] to change,” she says.

Further, while the Department of Basic Education (DBE) does define IT as a school subject, the number of schools offering the subject is declining year-on-year.

“According to the DBE, the number of IT learners in all provinces has decreased since 2008, with drops of 66% in the Northern Cape, 64.3% in KwaZulu-Natal and 61.3% in North West.”

Nationally, there is an average of only 12 IT learners per school, with the highest average of 14.6 in Gauteng.

Together, Gauteng and Western Cape accounted for 54% of IT learners in 2020. By 2020, girls accounted for only about a quarter of IT learners.

“The race participation rate in IT should reflect national demographics, the DBE notes. However, there is still a large portion of white, at 44%, and Indian, at 14%, learners, with the portion of African learners, at 34%, not reflecting the national demographics,” Goba points out.

There seem to be various factors at play, including that some schools do not have computer laboratories or are losing their resources to theft and there are also too few IT teachers.

Further, one of the most pertinent challenges is maintenance gaps. Schools often do not have maintenance teams, and educators must look after the computer laboratory and fix these resources, and it appears the DBE does not have enough IT officers to support schools.”

Additionally, running an IT lab is not cheap. Free and low-fee schools struggle to make ends meet, and they then need to raise potentially tens of thousands of rands a month for computers, licences, connectivity and maintenance. While licence and connectivity support is available to many schools, maintenance remains a challenge, Goba highlights.

“The question is: how do we support teachers so they can deliver the subject without having to worry about other basic things like maintenance and security?”

Goba proposes the creation of a forum to bridge the needs of educators through the support South African IT companies can offer as a solution.

“For example, IT companies could volunteer the regular support of their IT technicians to manage maintenance. Because a relatively low number of public schools offer IT, this commitment would be manageable and could fall under the company’s [corporate social investment] programme.

“Coordination plays a role, and this is something we as the institute could support. It cannot be a blanket approach, but we could look at where the most IT students are and where the greatest need is,” she says.