Education | ED06 | Summer 2019

Is your child ready to become
a Cyber Attack Agent or an
Algorithm Bias Auditor?
Jeremy Lewis, head of school at aCs egham international school,
looks at ways you can ensure your child is prepared to meet the
challenges of the 21st century workplace
what will today’s children be when they enter
the workplace? with the rapid pace of change
in society and the furious advance of new
technologies, it’s increasingly hard to predict both what and
where new jobs will be.
the world economic Forum estimated that six in ten
children today will have careers that, as yet, simply don’t exist.
and very recently, it firm, Cognizant, created a list citing 21
possible ‘jobs of the future’. these included some thoughtprovoking
job titles including Cyber attack agent, algorithm
bias auditor and head of Machine personality design.
it’s interesting how we all take for granted that the jobs
of the future will be created primarily in it and technical
industries, but what really struck me about this list, was just
how many of these so called ‘new jobs’ also alluded to a high
degree of creativity.
i was greatly encouraged by this as it suggests that it’s
by following a broad and well-rounded curriculum that
our children will be best prepared for these new and
challenging roles.
STEAM vs STEM
at aCs, we believe in the steaM approach. this is steM
(science, technology, engineering and maths), with the
addition of the arts.
while an education focused on steM will help prepare
students for scientific fields, studying the arts is clearly
increasingly important and relevant in industries that rely
on innovators and creative minds to generate new ways of
thinking about the world.
it’s the people who can truly
synthesise ideas and create new
and exciting options who will be
headhunted as the next Cyber attack agent or Virtual identity
defender, so by encouraging students in drama, music or the
visual arts as much as we do in traditional steM subjects, we
can truly help them develop the imagination needed for the
pioneering industries of the 21st century.
Building an entrepreneurial mindset
we also believe, in tandem to this, that developing an
entrepreneurial mindset can provide a strong foundation for
success in these pioneering industries and indeed create new ones.
our own report inspiring entrepreneurship in education
underpins this view. the report presents research
commissioned by the National Centre for entrepreneurship in
education (NCee) and aCs international schools amongst
heads of enterprise (hoes) in 62 universities across the uk and
cites that 90 per cent of hoes believe more should be done at
school level to develop entrepreneurship competence in students.
what’s more, considering perceived barriers to
entrepreneurship in schools, two thirds of university hoes
believe narrowing of subject choices has a negative impact on
entrepreneurship interest amongst students.
Factors that have a positive impact on students’ interest in
enterprise and entrepreneurship by the time they arrive at
university include the general ethos of the school; having teachers
trained in entrepreneurship; the students’ peer groups; and the
school teaching specific character-building skills.
and nearly two thirds of hoes also believe that exposure
to different nationalities and cultures while at school is highly
beneficial to students’ entrepreneurial outlook.
other positive factors include social media, crowdfunding sites,
tV programmes, such as dragon’s den, and e-commerce.
bottom of the list of factors were a lack of experience of
failure and brexit.
A qualification for the 21st century
in my view, our emerging generation of schoolchildren is,
if anything more powerfully determined than the so-called
‘millennials’ to do things differently.
they see entrepreneurship as a way to independence and
control in their careers and to making the world a better
63 wealdentimes.co.uk