Employers and the government have joined forces to launch an initiative to transform the school IT curriculum after stinging criticisms of the teaching of the subject by Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, last month.

Launching the “Behind the Screen” scheme, David Willetts, the science minister, told the British Science Festival in Bradford that the idea had been in development since last year. But he promoted the project, which will see a greater emphasis on creating software and writing computer programs, as a response to Mr Schmidt’s Edinburgh MacTaggart lecture.