This piece sums up one of the problems perfectly - the teachers simply can't keep up with the technology involved. As far as I can tell, our high-school CS curr

This piece sums up one of the problems perfectly - the teachers simply can't keep up with the technology involved. As far as I can tell, our high-school CS curriculum in Queensland hasn't changed much since the early 90s. It consists of: - One and a half semesters of "conceptual schema design procedure", backed up by a mundane textbook written in 1989 by a "big wheel" type from a local university. What makes this particularly strange is the amount of conceptual work you do on relational database schema design without actually using a relational database. - Two and a half semesters of Visual Basic 6. I asked my teacher why he was still teaching it and his response was more-or-less "...because it's the only language I know". CS4HS could be a real help here. - A smattering of lessons on "social and ethical issues in IT", which are about as insightful as they sound. Of course, the HS curriculum is just one of the issues. The mining boom has meant that newly minted EEs can get up to $120k straight out of university by joining the fly in/fly out workforce in central QLD and WA, so the mathematically inclined students tend to choose civil, electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering courses. Australia has a long way to go if it wants to become the world's "Silicon Beach".