Wolfram Research Europe Ltd – Written evidence (PSU0039)
Introduction to the Wolfram Organisation and our reasons for submitting evidence
For 30 years, Wolfram has been at the centre of mathematics worldwide in more ways than any other organisation: as employers, suppliers of technology, users of mathematics for creating technology and as distributors of mathematics to the world’s companies, governments, universities and schools. Wolfram is often credited with having strongly contributed to the increased use of mathematics in the real world during the last few decades. It is out of this uniquely broad and real-world basis for understanding the world’s mathematics that our views have been formed.
Based on this uniquely broad perspective, Conrad Wolfram, author of The Math(s) Fix, founded computerbasedmath.org (CBM) to lead a fundamental rethink and redesign of STEM subjects’ curricula so they truly reflect today’s real-world subjects. Conrad and the CBM team are thought leaders in the development of computer-based, computational-education outcomes and the creation of Computational Thinking curricula and materials to realize those ambitions.
We would like to offer responses to questions 2 and 3:
STEM skills
2) What STEM skills is the UK lacking and what skills are likely to be in high demand in future?
Are businesses able to recruit people with appropriate STEM skills?
Are STEM graduates being sufficiently prepared for highly skilled careers?
What is being done to allow for people to develop STEM skills across multiple disciplines throughout their career? What could improve this?
Is the STEM skills gap growing or shrinking?
At no time in history has new machinery threatened to take over from humans as it does now. Previous eras of mechanisation have been largely confined to replacing then scaling up physical activities. Instead, computers are continuing to take over intelligence and knowledge-based activities—areas previously considered quintessentially human.
How should education react? Do we still need to learn skills that computers now perform? If not, what should we learn instead?
It is strongly our view that standing on new powers of automation and enabling humans to go further and take on new challenges is the urgent priority, not trying to continue to do tasks that compete with them. This means learning to handle harder, more complex problems earlier (to mimic growing complexity in the real world), as well as gaining experience ofmanaging and interfacing with our new machinery (computers and artificial intelligence (AI)). It also means jettisoning most of skills that computers take over.
In mainstream school education, mathematics is starkly at the centre of this issue: it’s the core technical subject and curricula everywhere still retain hand-calculating as their focus. Yet in the real world—where maths skills are so coveted—almost all calculating is by computer, adding much more conceptual complexity and very different approaches for which students are today ill-prepared. School maths today is perhaps 80% content that will not be used outside education and however well that subject is taught with whatever IT provision in its pedagogy, it will still fail to match what’s now needed.
For all education, in a rapidly changing world—particularly one with increasing AI—we regularly need to address both what are “today’s human survival skills” and what are “top human value-adds”, or we rapidly find a mismatch between what’s learnt at school and what’s in fact needed both by individuals and more generally for society.
One such core human skill that attaches to both is “Computational Thinking”. A recently rejuvenated term, it is being heralded as a new imperative of education and we believe it is a useful banner for the core technical school subject that combines many of the needed aspects of today’s maths, computer-based maths and coding.
We see ability at computational thinking (with a modern toolset) as an important strand while our most affluent societies transition from knowledge economies (in which direct knowledge is the key driver to success) to what we term computational knowledge economies (in which knowledge of applying computational thinking is key).
Should “Computational Thinking” replace “Maths” as the core subject in a modern secondary curriculum? The terminology is largely a political decision driven by whether reform or restart is the best route, but in essence a change to this subject is the key element needed to achieve success.
Education sector
3) What measures is the Government taking to address any STEM skills gap? Are they sufficient to address the requirements of wider government policy aims for science and technology, including net zero?
Do cultural influences such as social media have a role to play in increasing uptake in STEM careers? Could the Government do more to encourage this?
Is there sufficient training in STEM skills available for workers who want to retrain? What schemes are there and how easy are they to access?
How easy is it to recruit teachers with scientific skills and expertise? What more can be done to encourage highly skilled individuals from all backgrounds to go into STEM education?
How much of a role could (and should) the private sector play in retraining their workers, or supporting workers to retrain?
Achieving “computational literacy” and advanced computational thinking (CT) across all students is a key educational requirement as we enter the AI age, just as mass literacy has been central to economic development during prior industrial revolutions—and early-adopter jurisdictions showed an extensive first-mover advantage. The Government must accept this and take steps to reduce the ever emerging skills gap. It must also work closely with the private sector to help with the retraining of workers and to ensure we develop the materials and training to encourage teachers to develop scientific skills and expertise.
Today’s education is not meeting the need of industry, higher education or commerce. In the real world, high-powered computers have enabled computation, and, therefore, data science, modelling and AI are increasingly prevalent. By contrast, in education, there is no mainstream subject that trains and empowers most students in this powerful way of thinking. The subject most claimed to prepare people—math—is focused on how to calculate simple problems by hand, not how to optimize decisions alongside computers on complex, nuanced and messy life problems for which computation is now widely used in real life. Computer science is more narrowly focused on writing code and building algorithms, which are only one part of the full computational process.
The UK should look to benefit by:
In conclusion, if the Government is to address the requirements of wider government policy aims for science and technology, including net zero? it must bring together expertise from the private sector, public sector and education to develop a new set of Computational Literacy Qualifications.
6 September 2022