Sony: UK Schools Need More Computer Clubs
Sony UK's Ray Maguire expressed his desire to see every school in the UK launch a computer club to encourage more people to consider a career in games development.
Ahead of the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards, Ray Maguire, head of Sony Computer Entertainment UK, spoke to the the Guardian about the creativity of the video games industry as a whole. Despite Sony’s plans to use games like Little Big Planet to encourage creativity, Maguire said he felt that getting kids involved in coding from a young age would be hugely beneficial to the industry.
"The area we also need to look at is much deeper, hard coding. We have 5000 secondary schools in the UK, if we put computer clubs into all of those, and we had just one child from each school going to university to study games development, then say we only had one out of every ten of those joining the industry, we'd have 500 people joining the workforce every single year," Maguire said.
"That would be a great achievement. We also need script writers, fantastic fine artists – we're reliant on all the other arts to be part of the overall production. But maths, physics and coding are fundamental – games can't exist without them."
BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), which also runs the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards, counts Maguire as Chairman of its video games committee, and he hopes that the Academy’s position as a charity can help out the gaming industry in the education department.
“BAFTA can help us here. It is a charity and education is a huge part of it. It's important to reach people through the events we put on throughout the year, and we're looking to put on more. We also video as many as we can – you can see some great footage on the BAFTA website,” he said.
“BAFTA is a massive brand, it's got creativity written through its DNA, it also has access to wonderful people who can bring this stuff to life for kids. There's a great way we can all interact here - it needs some thinking about, it needs some sorting out, but it will develop over time.”
Read the full interview with Ray Maguire on the Guardian (part 1, part 2).
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It's a shame sony didn't say this 15 years ago when i was 1/2 way thru secondary school, i would've jumped at the chance to learn how to program back then, not that i'm griping about having learnt by myself what i know now, but we wouldn't have had the shortage of decent programmers if schools did this much earlier instead of opting more for media studies and other non technical courses, but otherwise i quite agree with you sony.
It's a shame sony didn't say this 15 years ago when i was 1/2 way thru secondary school, i would've jumped at the chance to learn how to program back then, not that i'm griping about having learnt by myself what i know now, but we wouldn't have had the shortage of decent programmers if schools did this much earlier instead of opting more for media studies and other non technical courses, but otherwise i quite agree with you sony.
I agree with this. The entire British education system went the way of creativity with technology, not anything actually useful like programming. Now they are paying for it with coder and programmer shortages which India has the pleasure of picking up the slack on.
I too am self learning C++ and Java, i am heading off back to university to study games development in the coming academic year, i only wish i was encouraged to realise what i really wanted to do earlier in school.
It's a nice thought but there are a few things in its way.
1:
Budget. Spending cuts are serious.
2:
A 'club' usually means multiple people, usually 10+. Very few will carry on with it with less than 5 people and I doubt they'll go ahead with only one person.
3:
Perception of the club. Even if people want to go, they only (well, mostly) will in large(ish) numbers with friends. This will look like a complete 'nerd gathering' (sorry if you find this offensive but that's the simplest way of putting it) and so few will actually join even if they want to due to how this looks socially. Some may find this stupid but that is the reality.
I run our school's computer club!
Sadly, at primary there's not a great deal of learning done, but I teach them how to do anything they ask, and will happily extend on their lessons.