General Assembly expands apprenticeship scheme to bridge digital skills gap
General Assembly has extended its apprenticeship scheme in the UK to help better meet demand for digital skills and training within business and start-up communities.
The technology, design and business education provider, will focus the scheme on helping people into jobs, having added a range of updated classes and courses designed to boost employability.
The scheme, which launched in the US earlier this year, matches students taking the long-form courses with paid work placements.
Initially the programme will be available to UK students who have completed its 12-week full-time Web Development Immersive (WDI) course, which trains them to become a junior-level web developer.
It has also incorporated a stronger entrepreneurial theme into the curriculum, with classes including ‘Landing a job at a start-up’, and more in-depth courses on coding, digital marketing and data science.
General Assembly’s regional director Matt Cynamon said the curriculum has been designed to provide the kind of skills employers are looking for, while helping students apply what they have learned in actual employment.
“From our most recent long-form courses, we are seeing a very high success rate of students securing jobs at the end of study. Outcomes from our last 12 week WDI course have been fantastic – 100 per cent of the students have secured employment with companies such as Adaptive Lab, Mixlr and Pearson Future Technologies,” he said.
One such student, 20-year old Pedro Maltez, has recently secured employment with creative tech company Adaptive Lab following his graduation from the WDI course, said: “I’ve always been interested in coding but I didn’t know how to go about getting an entry-level job in this area.
"The course was ideal, as it provided me with all the necessary skills, plus gave me the confidence I needed to change careers. Before starting the course I was helping out in the family cleaning business, now I’m excited to be beginning a completely new and challenging career, and one with great prospects.”
According to a recent Gfk report 77 per cent of UK tech city business leaders said their companies would grow faster if more skilled employees were available, while 94 per cent admitted they use temporary methods to plug resourcing gaps.
The move follows the expansion of another Google-backed graduate scheme aimed at boosting digital skills. The scheme, called Squared, began as a collaboration between the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and around 35 media and creative agencies, and was designed to cultivate digital skills for a new generation of graduates and executives in the UK ad industry.
It has since rolled out the online version of the programme, having partnered with the Home Learning College.