Trust’s approach to employer engagement helping a critical UK growth industry realise its potential
The ground-breaking partnership between ALET and the booming digital infrastructure industry is helping to address the talent shortage that threatens to hold back UK economic growth – and has been mentioned in a new report.
Digital infrastructure, newly classed as ‘Critical National Infrastructure’ alongside energy, food, defence and chemicals, is already a huge driver of economic growth in the UK, worth an estimated £4.7bn, and has enormous untapped potential as it powers the growth of AI and digital technologies. But it has a big issue – it can’t recruit enough skilled people.
A new report by TechUK has highlighted four key constraints to the success of this industry including a significant skills shortage, and cites one programme making progress in tackling it – the Digital Futures Programme!
Started four years ago, the ground-breaking initiative brought together Activate Learning Education Trust, a MAT with four UTCs, two comprehensive schools and just over 3,000 students in the Thames Valley, and some forward-thinking major digital infrastructure companies willing to leave competition at the door.
Working with the Trust, these employers realised that by collaborating they could bring enormous value to technical and digital education, as well as future-proof their industry by enthusing a new generation in the range of career opportunities available to them.
During the programme, students in the Trust’s STEM-focused secondary schools learn technical and employability skills that prepare them for STEM-focused degrees or apprenticeships. The programme enables students to learn about the digital infrastructure industry, and the significant opportunities, even at entry level, that are available to them.
Employment opportunities coming from the programme, which now has 13 partners including some of the biggest data centre companies like Digital Realty, Ark, AWS and Cyrus One and related experts like CBRE, LMG and JLL, are growing each year, with ALET supporting partners to develop and promote their apprenticeships. So far, with the programme having run in only one UTC until this academic year, five students have started work directly with partners after completing level 3 qualifications, and now the programme has been rolled out to all four of ALET’s UTCs, this will grow significantly.
The companies contribute financially to the Trust, enabling effective administration of the programme and presence at the industry’s biggest trade event of the year, Data Centre World, which both recruits new partners and provides a fantastic careers opportunity for those students who win a place to attend.
Partners volunteer their time to set exciting full-day challenges, run masterclasses on technical topics and train students in key employability skills such as communication, teamwork, CVs and interview skills. All students from year 10 to year 13 benefit from this programme, with engineering students also getting to work closely with partners within selected BTEC units, where partners set projects that meet learning aims and tackle real-world issues they face every day. One example of this is our CBRE energy management project:
This year, students in three of our UTCs are embarking on an exciting energy management project as part of their BTEC engineering curriculum. The new project, created by commercial real estate property expert CBRE, challenges students to create Net Zero strategies for a number of clients in different commercial settings. They must research relevant legislation, understand the main energy conservation techniques and how they would apply to different sectors, and then recommend energy saving technologies and conservation measures for each.
The project, based on a challenge CBRE and their clients grapple with daily, will give the students real-world experience of a huge problem facing companies and organisations across the world, which could be very relevant for them as they enter the workplace or further study. Moreover, CBRE specifically tasked a young engineer to write the task based on his role, and to support the students as they work through the project and develop their ideas.
Speaking on the programme, former UTC Heathrow student Hassan Elbabary, now an Engineering Apprentice at LMG said: “I’m happy that I’ve chosen a future-proof career; the jobs are limitless. I learnt many of the skills required for this role thanks to the various topics I studied in the Digital Futures Programme, which only enhanced my understanding of the sector.”
Read the TechUk report in full here:
