IT shares in £200m training cash allocation
The government has recognized the importance of the IT sector by announcing a big new grant. It is believed that the sector will share in a grant of £200m to be invested in new training facilities.
The investment, to be made over the next three years, is part of a wider move, signalled over the weekend by John Denham, secretary of state for innovation, universities and skills, that the government will focus attention on developing skills in a number of strategic sectors.
Official Government research shows that UK businesses will need an extra 160,000 extra IT staff by 2014. This is in addition to the 190,000 IT professionals identified by the report, Working Futures 2004-2014, needed to replace those currently working in IT, who will retire or otherwise leave the industry over the next seven years.
The money will come from existing further education budgets rather than additional funding. IT’s slice of the pie has yet to be announced. Denham is to arrange meetings next month with the industry-led sector skills councils, including E-Skills UK, to identify how the money should be invested.
Derrick Cameron, MD of IT firm Eximium which offers IT training as well as other IT services comments “Naturally, I’m delighted that the importance of investing in the future of IT is being recognized. The sector is clearly important and will become even more important in the future. There will be profound implications for the economy if training for the IT sector does not match its needs. Every part of the economy depends on the expertise of the UK’s IT professionals, and these plans to allocate more funds to help address the sector’s priority skills needs will be greatly welcomed by employers”.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Business Advice, IT Advice, IT Recruitment, IT Training, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
