Want to fix the digital skills gap? Go back to kindergarten

Bear with us a moment because we’re travelling back in time. To 2004, to be precise, when phones were just phones, TikTok was the sound a clock made, and chatbots were the stuff of science fiction. It was also the year a report called Education and Training 2010 was published by the European Commission. Not the catchiest of titles, granted, but it sure was prescient.

It talked about how education systems must prepare for a ‘knowledge-based society’, predicting the need for tech know-how, the digital upskilling of teachers and a trend towards lifelong learning. All important and positive things – so why are we still waiting in 2025?

Many who were newborns when this report was released are now looking for their first adult jobs. And they are doing so in a market and society that is slap bang in the middle of an economy/labour mismatch. Which is as problematic for the job seekers as it is for the companies who want to employ them. Businesses everywhere are struggling to find talent equipped with essential skills, from coding and cybersecurity to AI and data analytics, according to the European Commission.

We are now playing catch up in a big way, on a massively increased field, with a world of new skills to learn and significantly larger barriers to overcome. Just think, if many of the recommendations of that two-decade old report had been implemented quickly and in full, our newborns from 2004 would have hit the ground running when they started school.

And the evidence suggests that this work really must begin early, introducing digital skills to the very youngest in society. Indeed, back in the 1980s, pioneering learning theorist Seymour Papert invented a programming language for kids, called Logo, and found that the sweet spot to begin learning it was around five to six years old.

Social enterprises, like our friends at Stemettes, recognise this. So, their events, including an Innovation Challenge held at our London HQ, create learning experiences for girls and non-binary folks from age five to 25. They are also campaigning for the inclusion of more diverse role models in the UK STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) curriculum. In their own work, they do this routinely, inspiring the very youngest children, regardless of background and proving that all kids can see themselves becoming scientists, technologists, mathematicians or engineers from a very early age. Scaling this up across curricula is such a simple but effective way to show children that STEAM is for everyone.

But while skills are crucial, they can be limited without the right provisions and pathways – ready access to equipment, training to use it and up to date career advice. Here there’s a parallel role which tech companies of all shapes and sizes can and must play because, as important as school curricula are, development lag is very real, and updates are generally outpaced by reality. Equally, what can be delivered educationally may differ from region to region, based on budgets, student numbers and other invisible barriers. When you consider the sheer number of children who either cannot see themselves in tech or just do not have access to the kind of learning they need, you can see how we have ended up with this huge skills gap.

So, over the last decade, many companies – ourselves included – have been welcomed into classrooms across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It makes sense for those of us with the very latest in knowledge and technologies to step in and show children what is possible. Our Canon Young People Programme, for example, works with NGOs on the ground in some of the most under-resourced communities, exciting both children and teachers alike with new technology and ideas. But – just as importantly – talking about previously unthought of careers as serious options.

One of the most impactful ways organisations can drive change is by speaking directly with those who set educational agendas. After all, as technology companies, we are at the coalface of tomorrows world and know the skills it will take to get there. This, alongside the learnings from our outreach programmes, can play a powerful role in shaping the way education looks and bringing those glimmers of inspiration into all classrooms.

Every such activity begins with a set of principles embedded into our own culture and an important balance between outreach and inward focus. We invite students to our offices for mentoring experiences, innovation challenges and workshops, as well as establishing long-term educational partnerships, such as that with West London’s Global Academy. We also encourage our colleagues to be lifelong learners, role modelling what it means to work in technology for everyone around them – friends, family and colleagues alike. When children and young people see their parents, carers, aunts, uncles, grandparents or family friends doing STEAM jobs they love, it can be eye-opening and future changing.

So, there’s a need for this kind of joined up thinking, plus greater communication between organisations and new exciting ways to inspire youngsters – from kindergarten to career. And, ironically, we now have a new world of digital tools available to us which can help to realise these ambitions. We can present our children with truly life-changing ideas for what they might do when they grow up and which can positively shape their world.

Find out more about careers at Canon.