
The Tech Partnership – a network of employers building skills in the digital economy – and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have claimed there is a “need for businesses in all sectors to embrace tech apprenticeships as a key weapon in the battle for faster business growth”.
The government’s National Apprenticeship Week resulted in Halfords, Greene King, Boots, British Airways and more promising to create 23,000 apprenticeships across the UK, but this new study underlines the importance for many of those posts to be of the digital variety. Businesses across the country require 134,000 new tech specialists each year, and half of those are in junior positions, according to the findings. With 1.3m people working in said tech specialist field, which rose by six per cent in 2014, 42 per cent of companies from all industries believe its harder to fill vacancies for the role.Read more on apprenticeships:
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Indeed, this year has seen companies say they’re twice as likely to offer a tech apprenticeship than they were previously. Additionally, the amount of people applying for tech apprenticeships has doubled over the past three years, thus an average of 14 people apply for each vacancy, compared to nine applicants for apprenticeships overall.
Firms involved in the Tech Partnership include Accenture, BT, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung and O2, while non-tech partners include Asda, BBC, Jaguar Land Rover, Lloyds, Network Rail, Royal Mail and Save the Children.Share this story