A recent report from the Royal Society found that over half of secondary schools in the UK did not offer computer science as a GCSE between 2015-16, it continued to urge the UK government to increase spending on computer education ‘tenfold’ to ensure that young people currently in education could “unlock the full potential of new technologies”.
The UK is currently facing a huge gap in IT related skills, currently there are three times as many IT jobs out there, as there are available candidates. A recent report from Frost and Sullivan indicated there could be as many as 1.5 million security jobs to fill by 2020.
The skills shortage in Cyber is not exclusive to the UK, it is something that is experienced worldwide. The ISACA, non-profit information security advocacy group, predicts there will be a global shortage of two million cyber security professionals by 2019.
Here in the UK there has been an abundance of suggestions as to how we can work towards shortening the skills gap, the newly-renames Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport recently announced its ‘Cyber Schools Programme’ with the funding of £20 million to help train young people. The programme is intended to teach youngsters between 14-18, the basics in digital forensics, defending web attacks, programming and cryptography through games, challenges and projects.
Plugging the skills shortage is fundamental for the IT and cyber security sector, without doing so, we leave our businesses and homes at risk on a daily basis. Here at borwell we offer a range of apprenticeships and internships in cyber related courses as well as running a code club once a week in a local primary school If any of this is of interest to you please get in contact on 01684 377980.