Tina Jones – Director of Education at risual
From it’s in-depth of knowledge in the IT Industry, risual knew of the need to increase Digital Skills. UK Digital Skills Taskforce published a report “Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s Worlds” which highlighted that Britain faces a growing shortage of digital skills. Coupled with estimates from the Science Council suggesting that the ICT workforce will grow 39% by 2030, risual Education took the challenge to to address the digital shortage and increase IT skills nationwide.
It’s been a hugely successful year for us, we’ve partnered with many new colleges to launch risual Microsoft Academies in 2016 and have partnerships to continue this across to 2017. Our presence as hosts of the Local Education Partnership, attended by three Ministers of State shows the role risual Education is playing and the significance of the impact.
We are supporting many companies with IT apprenticeships now and our apprenticeship scheme is providing skilled individuals with access to both academic experts and industry expert assessors
There have been countless hours put into working with a network of fantastic Colleges across the UK who share our passion of driving digital skills in FE and enriching the IT ecosystem through skilled apprentices.
We are excited to grow risual Education in 2017, with more College launches planned and an ever-growing network of employers to support which is going to increase when the Apprenticeship Levy is introduced in 2017.
CRN AWARD
risual were proud winners of the ‘Best Apprenticeship Scheme’ Award 2016 at the CRN Sales and Marketing Awards 2016. The award recognised risual’s vision towards identifying digital skill shortages and the problem this gives to employers. The CRN award is a major achievement for us, showing off the strength of our apprenticeship offer and how young people can benefit as well as employers. We are honoured that our hard work and dedication has been recognised with the ‘Best Apprenticeship Scheme’ Award.
LEP dinner
In November of this year, we proudly sponsored the prestigious LEP network dinner which was attended by MP’s and important guests alike from Microsoft. The focus was firmly on developing digital skills to support industry growth and featured distinguished guests such as The Rt Hon Liam Fox MP, Secretary of State for International Trade, The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and The Rt Hon Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
College Launches
We have seen the launch of five risual Microsoft Academies – College of West Anglia, Cardiff and Vale College, Walsall College, Accrington and Rossendale College and College of North London, Haringey and Enfield (CONEL) – further demonstrating risual Education’s growth and desire to bridge the digital skills divide.
CONEL was our latest academy launch and it epitomises what we’re trying to achieve. The academy will help to address the shortage in digital skills by equipping students and apprentices with hi-tech expertise in order to succeed in the industry. The success of this launch was underpinned by the fact that there were 30 apprentices signed up prior to its launch.
Furthermore, there are plans to launch at both Sparsholt College and New College Swindon in early 2017.
