Chief executive of the Tech Partnership, Karen Price, is calling on the education and training system to help plug the IT skills gap to ensure the UK has a workforce equipped for the future.
According to the Tech Partnership’s recent survey with SAS, 90% of companies think they could achieve business benefits by strengthening their big data capabilities. It is estimated that 69,000 new recruits with big data skills will be needed by the sector over the next five years.
Price says that industry, education and government have a joint responsibility to educate young people about the importance of learning digital skills from school age, to prevent a generation being left behind.
Ben Rowland, Co-Founder of Arch, the leading Digital Marketing and IT Apprenticeship programme, commented: “This report confirms what employers across the country are telling us, that they are struggling to meet the growing demand for “big data” skills through the traditional hiring routes. Many of them are now hiring apprentices to help them manage and exploit their growing data.”
