Free digital Skills Bootcamps to help you become an IT professional

The UK government is on a mission to close the digital skills gap to help businesses develop and grow, and in turn, help the UK economy. In 2021 a report by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) revealed that 48% of UK businesses were hiring for roles that required digital skills, but 46% of those have struggled to find candidates with the right skills. This is due to the skills gap the UK is facing.

What is the digital skills gap?

The digital skills gap has emerged for a number of different reasons, including:

• The development of new technologies that require skilled workers.
•  Social and digital inequalities that affect access to learning new skills.
• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digitalisation for everyday life and company processes.

AND Digital is a digital consultancy and development agency, who are dedicated to helping tackle the digital skills gap. Their founder Parmjit Uppal has stated that; “UK organisations are still failing to sufficiently upskill employees, and it is directly impacting business and wider economic growth. This is because we have not come to a shared understanding of what the skills gap is or what digital skills means."

Rather than working in-house to upskill employees, many companies are searching externally. The problem with this is that talent pools are limited which means some roles take longer to fill, and this consequently impacts the productivity of the business.

According to a report by AND Digital, 29% of people said their lack of digital skills has limited pay, promotions, and career progression, and 58% of knowledge workers have never received digital upskilling from their employer.

How is the UK are addressing the digital skills gap?

The UK government has acknowledged that to build back the economy, they need to improve the skills of people across the country. In February 2022, the UK government released the Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper, in which they outlined their mission to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to flourish, no matter their location or background.

One of the initiatives they created was to invest £3.8bn in a Lifetime Skills Guarantee in England, enabling 11 million adults to gain an A Level or equivalent qualification for free via Skills Bootcamps.

They have teamed up with several educational providers including Universities, to put this initiative into place to offer high-quality education and skills provisions that support adults to retrain and upskill to meet current and emerging skills needs.

How to access the free Skills Bootcamps

You are eligible for the free bootcamps if you are an adult over the age of 19, without a level 3 qualification (a level 3 qualification is equivalent to an advanced technical certificate or diploma, or A levels). If you already have a level 3 qualification or higher but earn below the National Living Wage annually or if you already have a level 3 qualification or higher but are unemployed.

These Skills Bootcamps are flexible courses of up to 16 weeks which are free to eligible adult learners. Their aim is to provide adults with in-demand skills and then fast-track them to an interview with an employer, which will support them to be able to progress into well-paid jobs and help employers to fill much-needed vacancies.

Some of the digital Skills Bootcamps include:

• Agile project management
• Business analysis
• Cyber security
• Data analysis
• Data engineering
• DevOps
• Digital design
• Digital marketing
• IT support
• Software development
• UX design
• Web development

These are just a few examples of the many opportunities the UK government is providing you with to help you upskill for a career in IT. In alignment with their promise to make opportunities equal for everyone no matter where you live in the UK, they invested a further £550 million to expand the Skills Bootcamps and give more adults across the country the opportunity to gain the skills they need to access work in a range of priority sectors.

You can find free Skills Bootcamps based on your location here.

These qualifications will give you the opportunity to learn in-demand skills, which will lead you to a guaranteed interview for a more sustainable, higher-skilled job with a higher salary.

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