Press release: Monday 14^th September 2025

A coalition of over 60 leading organisations from the UK’s creative and digital industries, alongside education experts, today call on the Government to introduce a new Digital Creativity GCSE – a forward-looking qualification designed to equip young people with the skills required for jobs of the future.

The creative industries, already one of the UK’s greatest economic strengths, now contribute approximately £124–£126 billion to the economy and employ around 2.4 million people, with the video games sector alone generating nearly £8 billion in consumer spending in recent years.

Despite this growth, many school students finish Key Stage 4 without the digital, creative, and problem-solving skills needed by employers, particularly in fast-moving industries. As Ukie and others have noted, digital education remains inconsistent across schools.

There is a significant mismatch between what is taught in many computing or computer science GCSEs (often deeply technical and coding-focused) and the broader creative digital skills that sectors demand: design, collaboration, audio/visual production, ethical/AI literacies, user experience, computational thinking, creative design and innovation.

We also continue to see gender disparities persist, with only about 20% of Computer Science GCSE candidates are female. A new, more inclusive digital creativity pathway could help close this gap.

So what will the new GCSE do?

• Firstly, it will sit alongside a reformed Computer Science GCSE, giving students real choice at Key Stage 4 between a more technically-oriented computing route and a creatively oriented digital arts/technology route.
• Focus on hands-on, applied skills: visual design, audio production, game or app prototyping, ethical computing, creative problem solving, digital story-telling, user interface/user experience, collaboration and iteration.
• Aim for being inclusive, helping schools across different regions to have the resources, teacher training, and infrastructure needed so that opportunity is not tied to postcode.
• Support not just the video games sector, but the full breadth of UK creative industries, as well as other sectors increasingly depending on creative digital literacy (finance, healthcare, media, education, etc.).

“If the UK is to stay at the forefront of the global digital economy, we must equip and empower the next generation with the skills needed to navigate and innovate in a world being transformed by AI and robotics.” – Sir Ian Livingstone CBE, Co-founder of Games Workshop

What we’re asking of Government

• Introduce a new Digital Creativity GCSE as an optional subject at Key Stage 4.
• Work with industry, creative sectors, educators and skills experts to co-design the qualification so it has real value, relevance, rigour and equity.
• Ensure support and investment so that schools in every region have the resources, teacher training and infrastructure to deliver this effectively.

Read our open letter to Government below, as well as our detailed report on how the new subject would work here.