Education & Skills
Momentum is delivering key objectives from the plan devised by the Future Skills Action Group which is a working group comprised of Invest Northern Ireland, the Department for Employment and Learning, eSkills UK, Momentum and chaired by David Mawhinney of Equiniti ICS. Momentum played a key role in devising the plan and the resultant actions.
Increasing the supply of graduate software engineers is one of the key areas of concern for the Northern Ireland profession. Planned actions will have short medium and long term benefits.
The short term actions were to continue our work with the Software Professional Course.
This course is a 35 week course aimed at equipping non IT graduates for a role in the Software Industry. It has been tremendously successful with over 80% of those completing the course getting employment in the ICT industry. This year over 120 candidates across four colleges in Northern Ireland are on the course and companies are directly influencing the course content through Momentum.
For further details on the Software Professional Course
click here
Medium term actions were to target 18 year olds through the University Open Days held at Queens University and the three University of Ulster campuses. In September 2008 Momentum set up an ICT pavilion at each of the University Open Days which was themed around the ‘BringITon’ brand. The pavilion included snappy video presentations, interactive exhibits and a number of industry ambassadors were available to speak to the young people about their careers. The young people were then directed to the Computer Science departments. This had great results with, for example, the number of students visiting the Computer Science department at Queen’s University doubling (to more than 1,000) from the previous year.
University of Ulster, Jordanstown Open Day - September 2008
Finally the longer term aims were to raise awareness of the ICT industry and the careers available within the industry to younger pupils at school, their parents and teachers by:-
- A BringITon advertising campaign
- A BringITon website
- Running BringITon 14-16 events at various locations throughout Northern Ireland
- Participation in careers fairs, open days and specific school events to promote ICT careers
- Organising and coordinating direct engagement between companies and schools
- Educating ICT and Careers teachers on the opportunities offered by the ICT Industry
- Recruiting ICT ambassadors from industry to evangelise a career in the industry
Class visits to ICT companies were arranged through our Career Connections 2008-2009 programme