IT Skills Roundup: The top stories of 2011

'Inadequate' ICT education, competition with the US IT industry and SMEs being too picky about who they hire

The UK's economic standing is much less strong than it has been in the recent past and doubts around whether the country has the requisite skills to be able to compete on the global stage have grown.

This year has seen a series of campaigns, apprenticeships and reports all with the same aim: to help plug the skills gap.

Below are the most important skills stories from 2011.

Awareness of an IT skills gap in the UK

In May, Computing launched an IT Leaders campaign with the aim of helping IT leaders to identify and develop the skills they would need to further their own careers, and to identify the skills they should be looking to develop within their teams. The campaign involved interviews with several CIOs including IBM UK and Ireland's Simon Meredith.

In August, research released by insurance company Zurich found that more than half of Britain's mid-sized technology companies said they were concerned about losing skilled employees to overseas competitors.

A subsequent and similar report, issued by CWJobs in December, quoted IT professionals who believe the skills gap must be closed to enable the UK to compete with the US IT industry.

Also in December, Ofsted's ICT In Schools 2008-2011 report stated that ICT education in England was ‘inadequate' in a fifth of the secondary schools it surveyed. It also found that the number of students in England entered for ICT GCSEs and A-levels had declined.

Skills body e-skills UK said that Northern Ireland was the most adversely affected by the IT skills gap in the UK.

Which IT skills are the most highly sought after?

In a survey of the first half of 2011, C# was second on a list of the 10 most in demand IT language skills in the UK, with Java being most in demand.

In June, a survey by Business Intelligence Congress found that universities worldwide were failing to produce graduates skilled in business intelligence.

Later on in the year (October), Teradata CTO Stephen Brobst said that enterprises must invest in in-house skills if they are to take full advantage of big data and advanced analytics.

Chairman of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), Jeff Brooks, said that SMEs should be less picky when choosing an IT candidate if the UK is to begin plugging the IT skills gap.

Plugging the gap

The UKCES Employer Ownership Skills report released in December said that businesses should work with employees and training providers to design and develop training that their business needs for growth. It also said the government should put funding into such efforts.

Several businesses and institutions launched initiatives this year aimed at plugging the ICT skills gap:

In October, HP and Leicester's De Montfort University launched a BSc Business Informatics undergraduate degree with the intention of making young people more employable within IT.

In November, CompTIA launched a global cloud computing qualification developed alongside Microsoft, Google and IBM. It is a one-week full-time course for those seeking to work in both cloud service procurement and provision.

In addition, this month QA Apprenticeships told Computing that 85 per cent of its IT apprentices go into full-time employment. The apprenticeship provider works alongside Microsoft to tailor its courses to meet industry needs.