HP and DfE to explore industry role in secondary education

Vendor's EMEA tech boss asserts openness to working alongside rivals as he reveals government meeting

The government and HP are to explore whether the vendor giant – and its peers – could play a role in secondary IT education.

HP currently works with a number of universities to develop and deliver undergraduate degree courses. David Chalmers, EMEA chief technologist of HP's Enterprise Group, told CRN that his firm will be meeting with officials from the Department for Education (DfE) this week to discuss whether the vendor and its colleagues in the commercial sphere could play a role in secondary, or even primary education.

Having begun with its work alongside universities, the HP man claimed the involvement of the IT industry in technology education could begin to cascade through the Key Stages.

"It will come from the top down. It needs to ripple down, but it is not yet clear how far it should go," he said. "We have helped our partner universities rewrite their IT curriculum... [we have] permanent HP people on site, and we need to build centres of excellence. We are helping add some commercial realism."

He asserted that the company would be willing to take an open approach to working with competitors in the name of improving IT education.

"You have to take a wider view," he explained. "This is not about products anymore; [students at our partner universities] may well be learning on HP infrastructure, but they are learning Linux. They are doing programming, but it is OpenStack. The universities are twitchy about vendor lock-in."

CRN has contacted the DfE requesting comment but is yet to receive a response.