Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has warned that Britain would fall behind in the digital age unless it makes drastic changes in its education system.
Schmidt said something had to be done to "reignite" children's passion for science and technology, Sky News reported.
He praised British television as a success story but warned "everything" could still go wrong.
"If I may be so impolite, your track record isn't great. Britain is home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice. It's not widely known, but the world's first office computer was built in 1951 by Lyon's chain of tea shops," he said.
"Yet today, none of the world's leading exponents in these fields are from Britain," he lamented.
"Think back to the glory days of the Victorian era. It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges," Schmidt said, asking science and language teaching to be brought together.
He said he was "flabbergasted" that computer science was not taught as standard in British schools.
"Your curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computing heritage," he said.