Finding a career in software development

Newcastle College model a new qualification and enable students to find employment within a year

The Code Institute’s goal is to assist people in making a career change into software development. It is partnering with Further Education Colleges (to date Newcastle College, Halesowen, Harlow, MediProspects, University Centre Newbury, Colege y Cymoedd and City of Bristol) to deliver a Level 5 Diploma in Web Application Development. In collaboration with Newcastle College and South East LEP, it has just published a white paper: How Further Education Meets Industry Demands for Software Skills examining the ability of Further Education Colleges to deliver the software development skills to meet industry needs. The heart of this white paper is the experience of Newcastle College in deploying a new qualification that takes learners from a standing start of little or no knowledge of code and software development, to finding employment within a year.

The key findings of the white paper are:

The combination of Covid and Brexit has caused widespread unemployment and put an emphasis on the need for a technically skilled workforce Digital tech vacancies in the UK grew 36% between June and August 2020 according to a report by Tech Nation. With over 90,000 vacancies per week, the sector is outperforming all except healthcare in the demand for employees Further Education Colleges are an integral part of creating the workforce to meet this demand and bringing economic security to their community Colleges can partner with online education specialists like Code Institute to deliver Level 5 software development qualifications that meet Advanced Learner Loan funding requirements This gives Further Education Colleges the capacity to turn learners into earners in 12 months - employed in high-demand, sustainable tech jobs.

Code Institute is the only university credit-rated online coding bootcamp in Europe. Helped by the demand for software development and the fact that Code Institute has more than a thousand global hiring partners; 90% of its students are now in employment within six months of finishing the programme.