Dr. Cornelia Connolly:

As I tried to outline in my opening statement, an easy example would be where a Deputy or Senator is trying to circulate his or her election manifesto via email. That is digital skills which is available to all students in our school system. However, the understanding of an algorithm to write a piece of code or to use code to analyse voting patterns or monitor constituent concerns are the skills involved in computer science and those skills are not available to every student in the country. We have conducted research that highlights the issue of equity with the rural-urban divide. That touches a little on Deputy Farrell's question earlier. The socioeconomic divide is becoming transparent as well as gender issues around STEM education and computer science education. These are challenges that are emerging in the small number of schools that are currently offering computer science education.

Returning to Deputy O'Callaghan's questions, it is around computational thinking, coding skills, the understanding of algorithms and abstract thinking. They are the skills that are purely related to computer science as opposed to digital.