Develop Education Week: NESTA paper to show how UK dev sector can raise its game
The Livingstone-Hope Review, published tomorrow, will expose a serious level of misunderstanding amongst game development educators.
The paper will also advise the government on action that could transform the UK into the best source of talent for the games and visual effects industries.
“The UK has a longstanding reputation for creative excellence in video games production. This Review lays down the skills foundation enable this to continue into the future,” Eidos life president Ian Livingstone told Develop.
As part of a dedicated Education Week, Develop will publish key findings from the review every day, starting with initial facts outlined below.
On Wednesday Develop Online will also publish advice on how to get in the industry from its leading starts such as Phil Harrison, Alice Taylor, Chris Lee, Jon Burton and Paulina Bozek.
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Culture minister Ed Vaizey commissioned the NESTA skills review back in July 2010, calling on Livingstone and Alex Hope – founder of UK VFX house Double Negative – to produce an Independent Review of Skills for the UK’s two digital entertainment sectors.
Develop, which has seen the skills review, believes it reveals a shocking lack of knowledge amongst UK educators and students.
The report has found that “there are very low levels of public awareness of the strength of the UK in video games development and visual effects professions”.
Only three per cent of 11-18 year-olds recognise maths as the most important subject for a job creating games.
Six per cent of the same age group think Art was the most important discipline.
Seven per cent of parents recognise Maths as the most important subject for game development, while nine per cent think Art is the most principal discipline.
Fifteen per cent of teachers name Maths the key subject, while just nine per cent named Art.
"Even amongst teachers only 1 per cent think that physics is most important for video games,” the report’s authors claimed.
The Livingstone-Hope review has been produced with NESTA and Skillset and undertook seven separate strands of research for its completion, which included: a survey of 564 young people, a survey of 918 parents, a survey of 403 teachers, interviews with 19 course assessors at the UK universities producing the best specialist graduates for the sector, a survey of 224 UK video games companies, and an online survey that was completed by 910 people currently working or seeking to work in the UK video games industry.
Develop says "it reveals a shocking lack of knowledge amongst UK educators and students". Please note this is out of context - I'd recommend you wait till the whole report is out. There is actually a recognition that there is great work going on in education, especially HE, and the report makes positive recommendations to make the best better.
As one of the 19 course assessors interviewed, potentially, and an attendee at tomorrow's Launch in London, I am biting my hand hoping that it will be more a Byron for Education than the "blame HE/FE/Schools" result we are all dreading. The tone of questions from the research company that intalked to was "please identify why schools are failing you". I spent three times as long as the researcher told me it would take, but 2/3rds was me telling them off for subjective and prejudiced questioning. Let's hope this effort was not wasted and the report is a fair reflection of reality, not knee jerk politically loaded dogma.
After all, apart from PEGI being advocated, the Byron Report had a welcome but unexpected balance. Here's hoping.
