In a LinkedIn post, the Scottish Government’s chief entrepreneurial advisor has provided answers to a few of the most pertinent questions on the Scottish tech community’s mind following the sudden liquidation of CodeClan, the tech skills academy.

Most notably, in his first public statement since last Friday’s news, Mark Logan said that “we now expect that students will be able to complete their courses.”

CodeBase, the neighbour of CodeClan and the recipient of the £42 million Techscaler contract from the Scottish Government last year, is set to acquire CodeClan training materials and other assets from liquidators.

A group of former CodeClan tutors will then be contacted and paid to facilitate the teaching of the rest of the impacted students’ courses using the same training materials, according to Logan. For this period, the training team will be able to work out of one of the Techscaler sites, and have access to Techscaler resources and support.

Logan noted his appreciation of Stephen Coleman and Steven Drost of CodeBase/Techscaler, Economy Minister Neil Gray and his team of Scottish Government officials, and Scottish Tech Army’s founder Alistair Forbes for their joint involvement in the creation of this plan.

He also stated that the Scottish Government will be assisting with full funding to support this student training process.

In terms of when students and previous staff alike will be contacted, the chief entrepreneurial advisor wrote that “Codebase will shortly provide additional information on the above process and will begin to contact some of CodeClan’s former employees from early next week, with student outreach to follow shortly afterwards.”

Where was the financial support for CodeClan?

After outlining how CodeClan’s most recent cohort of students are expected to be supported, Logan then moved onto another of the prescient questions asked by members of the Scottish tech community: where was the financial support for CodeClan, not least from the Scottish Government?

In the 2020 Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (STER), which Logan was commissioned to undertake by MSP Kate Forbes, it stated that “CodeClan should be treated as a strategic ecosystem asset.”

However, in today’s LinkedIn post, Logan stipulated that CodeClan’s business model had become “structurally unsustainable,” with client companies taking fewer graduates from the skills academy, resulting in falling revenues and loss-making over a period of time.

In terms of the question of financial support through public money, Logan wrote that “Public money can only be injected into a private business according to strict legal constraints and rules.

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“If independent analysis concludes that such an injection will not alter the long-term course of a business in the context of its forward plans, then it cannot be done.”

Logan also noted that the strategic need for Scotland to have a channel where people can retrain as software engineers or data analysts has not gone away, and Scotland must re-establish that channel “in a way that is sustainable and fully relevant to current industry needs.”