“It is quite astonishing that basic computer literacy and coding are not part of our schools curriculum already,” said Anthony Rushton, CEO of Telemetry - the world's biggest purveyor of digital media forensics.

“I have been banging on about it for years but, quite honestly, nobody listens. It will take years to approve and develop an ITC curriculum that the educationalists are happy with. In the short term vocational courses offer children the best opportunities of learning coding quickly in school,” he said.

There has been an explosion in the numbers of vocational courses offered by schools. In 2004 15,000 pupils took vocational courses as part of their curriculum in 2010 that figure had ballooned to 575,000.

“Government are quite right in thinking that children who complete a NVQ in horse care should not be judged to have the equivalent of four good GCSE’s but I passionately believe in more ICT training in schools and we need to organise it straight away,” said Anthony Rushton.
There has been a startling drop in the number of students achieving IT qualifications in British schools – there was a 57% decline between 2005 and 2010.

“The web has greatly democratises business opportunities. Anyone who learns to code gives themselves access to the new business world regardless of background or privilege,” said Anthony Rushton. "There is a great deal of talent in Britain but we must do everything we can to safeguard the future."

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO said recently: "I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as a standard in UK schools. Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computer heritage."