The Sheffield College to launch free digital skills training for adults

Adults who want to develop their digital skills to get into employment and progress in their career are being offered free training. 

The Sheffield College-led South Yorkshire consortium has been selected to offer Skills Bootcamps – part of the government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee and Plan for Jobs.

The government has announced that its Skills Bootcamp training programmes will be expanded across the country, offering an extra 16,000 fully funded places for adults to upskill or retrain.

The expansion covers a range of digital and technical training including in green skills, such as solar energy installation, sustainable agriculture, nuclear energy, and green transport, along with coding and software development, so more adults have the opportunity to access the skills and training they need that leads directly to a job.

The measures come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered his levelling up speech on July 15th, 2021, where he underlined the need to escalate the value of practical and vocational education through the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.

Skills Bootcamps are flexible courses of upto 16 weeks that provide the opportunity to build sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer.

The free vocational training scheme, funded by the government’s National Skills Fund, aims to help adults aged 19 and over to improve their job prospects.

The training is open to adults who are employed, self-employed, career changers or unemployed within the last 12 months.

The College will be providing Skills Bootcamps in digital skills, backed by employers, from September 2021. The specific Skills Bootcamps include infrastructure technician, software development technician and cyber security technologist.

Andrew Hartley, Executive Director, Commercial and Operations, The Sheffield College, said:

“There is huge demand from employers for advanced digital skills. We welcome the opportunity to support more adults to go further in their careers as part of a wider skills-led recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.”

The scheme is part of the government’s Skills for Jobs White Paper first announced in January 2021, that aims to support lifelong learning and put further education colleges at the heart of the pandemic skills recovery.

The Sheffield College is the lead provider of the South Yorkshire Skills Bootcamps in digital skills consortium that includes Barnsley College, RNN Group, Sheffield Hallam University and The Developer Academy.

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