Open letter to Minister of Education Anna Ekström

Create conditions for the school to work with digital competence and programming

The IT industry in Sweden is growing and becoming increasingly important. System developer is today one of the most common professions.

Our big challenge is to find a workforce with skills and interest in the area. According to a recent report from the IT & Telecom companies, we will have a shortage of 70,000 IT experts unless special efforts are made. If we do not succeed in recruiting new talent, Sweden's position in IT will be threatened.

A few years ago, there was a lot of talk about programming in school. As a result, programming was included in the compulsory school curriculum as a part of mathematics and technology and as part of digital competence in the overall goals. The evaluations that have been made show that this work has not been sufficient at all. Students do not gain the understanding of programming and the digital foundations required in modern society.

We must realize that in today's labor market, digital knowledge, programming and system development are crucial competencies. The school does not reflect this at all. This risks leading to us as a country slipping behind.

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A crucial factor for the students to get the understanding we are looking for is that we have competent teachers. It is therefore very worrying that seven out of ten mathematics teachers lack training in programming, according to a survey from the National Union of Teachers. 

The school must be given the conditions - time, budget, competence, support - to promote digital competence and programming as an obvious part of all subjects. Digitization affects everything in our society and is therefore relevant in all school subjects. By placing greater emphasis on this knowledge in school, the IT industry will also have better conditions for recruiting more girls, which is a shortcoming today and a strategic issue for us as an industry.

We realize that this is not quite simple and that both resources and teachers with the right skills are required. From the industry and civil society, we are happy to help in this work, so that more people have the opportunity to develop their knowledge for the labor market of the future.

Johan Jacobsson, CEO of Sylog Sverige AB

Disa Jernudd, Secretary General of the Code Center

Johan Strid, CEO of Prevas AB

Åsa Zetterberg, Federal Director of IT & Telecom Companies
Anna Bäck, CEO of Kivra AB

Peter Vincent, Head of Connected Systems Scania