WMCA launches £21m funding for digital skills boot camps

The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has launched its next round of digital boot camps.

The bootcamps are free of charge and offer people access to roles in areas like coding, cybersecurity and digital marketing.

Through a £7m grant, the WMCA has so far piloted over 30 digital boot camps, training around 2,000 adults who were unemployed or in low-paid jobs with vital tech skills.
One of these pilots has seen 62% of learners secure a positive outcome.

Based on this success the WMCA decided to bolster its boot camp provision with more funding.

£21m has been made available from the Adult Education Budget to support the new boot camps over the next three years, with a target of supporting over 4,000 people.

These will run from November 2021 to October 2024.

Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands and chair of the West Midlands Combined Authority, said: “Retraining and upskilling have such critical roles to play in our region’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, and are a cornerstone of my jobs plan to help 100,000 people into work in the next two years.

“We know that training in the skills of the future that employers want and need is a crucial way to help people bounce back into employment quickly, and technology is an area of huge employment possibilities that we must help people get the right skills in.

“The sector offers new, exciting, and future-proof jobs, and digital boot camps are a great way of helping local people get involved.

“Our bootcamps have been a great success and provided a clear pathway for people to move into work, and so I am delighted that we can now continue our great work and get more residents the skills they need to move into the high-quality, well-paid jobs of the future.”

The ten providers selected to deliver WMCA digital boot camps are: Generation You Employed; University of Birmingham; School of Code; Tech Talent; Capita; The Skills Network; LEAD; Resume Foundation; Twin Training International; and Code Your Future.

Their bootcamps will cover data analytics and data engineering, web development, coding, UI and UX design, cloud computing, digital marketing and cybersecurity, among other specialisms.