Pupils based in the South of Scotland are getting specialist support to help bridge the current digital skills gap in the country.

As part of the new ‘Digital Critical Friends’ initiative, secondary schools across the Scottish Borders and Dumfries & Galloway will be directly paired with relevant specialists and firms to help develop their interests and abilities.

Businesses across Scotland that have already signed up to the initiative include PwC, Virgin Money, Amazon, Leidos, Morgan Stanley and Adobe.

Digital Critical Friends matches teachers with industry professionals to strengthen the relationship on both sides, share current industry practices and give different sectors the opportunity to feed into curriculum development.

The new programme is a partnership between ScotlandIS, Skills Development Scotland (SDS), DYW Borders and D&G and 25 secondary schools across the region.

Commenting on the initiative, Karen Meechan, CEO of ScotlandIS, said: “We know that a big reason the digital skills gap exists is because of the drop-off rates of school children and young people choosing the subject, or having the opportunity to.

“Our aim is to help rectify this by connecting industry mentors to computer sciences teachers across the South of Scotland. This will allow us to work more closely with teachers to offer support and provide industry news, highlight where the new technologies are, and help them advocate for more or better funding for their department to encourage young people into the computing and tech subjects.”

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The Scottish Technology Ecosystem Report (STER) released in 2020 and assessing the Scottish tech sector, established that computing science should be treated as a core school subject in schools’ curriculums in the same way as maths and physics.

Research found that 13,000 digital tech job opportunities are created every year in Scotland and filling all of them would add £1bn to Scotland’s economy.

Digital Critical Friends provides an opportunity for industry to share current working practices with secondary schools, helping to shape our future curriculum and teaching methods.

Phil Ford, Head of Digital Technologies and Financial Services for SDS, added: “Creating a thriving digital sector is critical to future growth in the South of Scotland. This programme provides a great opportunity for digital tech businesses to influence future skills and talent to meet future economic demand in the area.

“Our goal is to ensure the curriculum is industry relevant, that teachers are upskilled and sector savvy, and young people have an increased awareness of digital career opportunities.”

To get involved as a mentor or find out further information, contact ScotlandIS here.

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