CodeBase, the operator of Scotland’s Techscaler startup support network, announced it is relaunching CodeClan, Scotland’s national digital skills academy, with three Scottish colleges and a Silicon Valley coding specialist.
A pilot with Edinburgh College, Borders College and West Lothian College is set to commence this summer with programme content delivered by Silicon Valley education platform Qwasar.
“The relaunch is in response to high levels of industry demand for software development and data science expertise, a requirement for addressing the digital skills gap,” said CodeBase.
Last August, Codebase said it would acquire CodeClan’s training materials and other assets from the liquidator.
CodeClan announced on August 4 last year it had gone into liquidation and would cease all operations.
CodeBase is currently engaged in discussions with other colleges, and the public and private sectors, with a view to a Scotland-wide rollout of CodeClan next year.
“Establishing a route for people to switch careers into technology is vital to meeting the talent needs of Scotland’s tech sector,” said Mark Logan, chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish government.
“I’m particularly excited about the new CodeClan’s highly scalable delivery model.
“The three-way partnership between CodeBase, Qwasar, and Scotland’s college network makes possible a national scale programme, combining in-person and online training with world-class, constantly refreshed learning materials.
“By leveraging these assets in combination, the CodeClan model is also now significantly cheaper and removes the payment burden for employers too, which was a problematic area for the prior CodeClan model.”
Martin Boyle, VP of transformation and strategic relationships at CodeBase, said: “We have spent the last few months reassessing the CodeClan model, and with Qwasar in place we have a world-class content provider that is aligned with the latest needs of industry, delivered through the Scottish college network.
“While the pilot is relatively small and regionally-focused for now, we envisage Scotland-wide provision in due course.”