Queen Mary, University of London is celebrating its partnership with the Institute of Coding (IoC). In just 12 months, IoC partners have successfully signed-up over 5,000 people onto its leading tech courses at universities across the country.
To date a total of 5,875 people enrolled onto courses, with 175 staff members employed across the IoC university network to drive recruitment and take-up of key courses.
Since its formal launch at the House of Lords in June 2018, there have been 35 IoC supported courses created so far, which includes degrees, modules and hackathons. At Queen Mary, University of London, we successfully launched a new MSc in Artificial Intelligence in September 2018 with a cohort of 38 students and in the year ahead, we will introduce new degree apprenticeships, invite hundreds of students to participate in hackathons and introductory courses for coding novices, and offer professional development opportunities in digital skills for industry.
As well developing new courses, the IoC have appointed 51 people who represent industry, academia and diversity to sit on various IoC boards and steer the work. An Institute of Coding was also set up in Wales in 2018.
Under the Future Projects Fund, funded by the Office for Students, the IoC will soon allocate £2.3million to further proposals from industry and academia to help fill the digital skills gap and support the work of the IoC.
Rachid Hourizi, Director of the Institute of Coding commented, ‘The Institute of Coding is dedicated to driving digital skills and widening access to high quality learning to thousands of people from all walks of life. After a year of hard work and determination, we’ve made huge progress in tackling the skills shortfall, but there is still much more to do.
It’s vital that industry works closer with the IoC and our academic partners to design and build new courses for graduates and existing employees, spreading opportunity and upskilling workforces across the country.’
Edmund Robinson, Professor of Computer Science and IOC project lead at Queen Mary, University of London added, ‘Queen Mary’s history of teaching practical skills in first Electrical Engineering and then Electronics and Computer Science to students from all walks of life here in the East End of London stretches back over a hundred years to before we became a university. We are proud to be part of this project that fits so well with this long-standing commitment of our own.’