IT skills academy gets gov't green light

The government has given the go ahead for a National Skills Academy for IT, set to open next year.

The National Skills Academy for Information Technology is one of four to get the thumbs up, and is looking to open its doors in summer 2009.

According to the chief executive of IT sector skills body e-skills UK, Karen Price, the next six months will be "critical" as the project enters the core business-planning phase.

"We've got six months to get the whole thing populated, to get products on the shelf," she told ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, silicon.com, adding: "We're very interested in more and more [industry professionals] getting involved because this next six months is going to be critical in shaping what the academy does and [how it] meets the employer needs."

Price is especially keen that small businesses don't get overlooked, and that SMEs get involved in the planning. "They are very, very busy people but it must meet the needs of small businesses as well," she said.

The academy will share a pot of £30m in government funding with academies for enterprise, power and social care.

"We asked for £8m. That £8m is to cover the first three years of the academy — both its start-up and its running costs for three years — and that money is to be matched by employers… In year four, it has to be self sustaining in terms of running costs but it will still get what government calls 'revenue funding', which will be subsidies for training," Price said.

All the employers will be able to contribute "in kind", according to Price, so rather than donating money, they could offer time or software licences or open up their in-house e-learning to other employers.

Employers that have already collaborated with e-skills UK for the IT academy include Accenture, the BBC, BT, Carphone Warehouse, C&W, HP, IBM, the Metropolitan Police, Sainsbury's and Vodafone.

According to John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the academy will be crucial in attracting new blood to the IT industry.

"Now, more than ever, we need to develop innovative training that inspires and empowers a new generation to realise their ambitions. A new National Skills Academy for IT will help build a world-beating workforce that will improve productivity and competitiveness, not just among new recruits but within the existing workforce," Denham said in a statement.

The Academy will seek to recruit its students from schools and university graduates but also those already employed in jobs other than IT, as well as focusing on reskilling and upskilling.

"Understanding the business is absolutely critical to being a good IT professional now so hiring in from [non-IT areas of] business and adding technology aspects will be a good route to train people up," Price said.

E-skills's Price added: "Our research [shows] due to churn and people retiring we have about 140,000 vacancies a year to fill across IT professions and if you look at it we're turning out about 12,000 or 13,000 computer science grads a year — half of which trot off and say I'm going to work in the city or law and never go into IT, so to fill those 140,000 vacancies we cannot just look at school leavers or university leavers — there just aren't enough of them."

The lack of skilled graduates is being compounded by offshoring and outsourcing, according to Price. "We've sort of lost the shop floor here in the UK. We used to hire an awful lot of people and they'd get trained up in the early years — and the on-the-job experience is better than anything else — [but] an awful lot of those jobs have gone now," she said.

Another area the academy may look to address is whether the IT industry needs to have a common accreditation scheme for skills, to help employees and employers better understand who and what they are dealing with.

The academy will train 10,000 people over the first three years of operation, but Price said this is a "conservative estimate" of what the academy could deliver.