Tech sector celebrates government’s fund for technical bootcamps

QA, the UK’s largest tech talent and training organisation, welcomes the Government’s commitment to investment in post-18 education and training announced today. Designed to level up and prepare workers for the post-Covid economy, the plans include £8 million for digital skills boot camps, funding for SMEs taking on apprentices, and access to training via the National Skills Fund to give those in work the chance to train for higher-skilled, better-paid jobs.

Government plans announced today demonstrate a commitment to closing the UK digital skills gap. A key part of the announcement was the expansion of successful boot-camp pilots in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands as well as introducing programmes in four new locations. Boot camps provide a rapid way for organisations to find the talent they need, as well as providing a pathway to higher salaried jobs for people who may not have thought they had what it takes to succeed in a tech role.

Paul Geddes, CEO of QA Ltd, says "We’re delighted to hear about the Government’s commitment to closing the digital skills gap in the UK, and particularly the announcement of an £8m investment in digital skills boot camps. As a partner in one of the pilot boot-camp programmes in Greater Manchester we’ve seen first-hand that if you take people with the right aptitude – regardless of their educational background – you can train them to a job-ready standard in some of the most in-demand digital skills, such as software development, in as little as 12 weeks. We look forward to helping develop the boot camp model further."

QA provides training and apprenticeships for UK businesses looking to close their digital skills gaps. As part of its ongoing commitment to the sector, QA provides a number of programmes such as CyberFirst and Teach the Nation to Code to provide young people with much-needed tech skills.

Notes to editors

About QA

QA is the UK’s leading tech talent and training organisation. We provide a comprehensive suite of services, helping individuals and companies to be winners in the digital revolution.

More than 270,000 people learnt with QA last year. We currently deliver to more than 5,000 apprentices, 10,000 higher education students and more than 6,000 corporate clients, representing over 85% of the FTSE 350. Our London campus is the largest professional training facility for technology skills in Europe and we have 22 other state-of-the-art training sites. We have leading practices in agile, cyber security, cloud and DevOps – as well as many other tech specialisms – and attract some of the very best technology trainers from across the globe. In addition, our deep-rooted vendor partnerships mean that we deliver 70% of the UK’s cloud training and are a Microsoft Gold delivery partner. In 2019, we acquired San Francisco-based Cloud Academy – one of the world’s most innovative digital training platforms.

We specialise in the people side of tech transformation – our learning programmes help businesses to upskill or reskill their existing employees and our talent services are used to identify, recruit and skill-up diverse tech talent for our clients. This unique combination of training and talent services means we command an exclusive position as the go-to educator for the world’s tech giants.