Press Release:
- CodeClan sees increasing demand from young people in underrepresented groups for 2023 Youth Academy
- CodeClan CEO Loral Quinn: “Sponsoring a student through CodeClan Youth Academy is a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs, or businesses to ‘pay it forward’ and help these young people secure a career in tech”
- Loral Quinn: “We need to get more diversity in tech now, we don’t want to look back in twenty years’ time and realise that we didn’t take action when it was most needed”
- Mark Logan, Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur: “With scaled participation from individuals and businesses across Scotland, the scheme could be transformational in both economic and societal terms”
CodeClan has experienced increasing demand from young people in underrepresented groups for its 2023 Youth Academy, and plans to take 40 16-21 year-olds into its free summer courses in Glasgow and Edinburgh which take place this July.
CEO Loral Quinn said: “Sponsoring a student through CodeClan Youth Academy is a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs, or businesses, to ‘pay it forward’ and help these young people towards a career in tech. The Youth Academy is free for all students with sponsored places, we’ve got 40 individuals on the waitlist, and we would find places for many more if we could secure more sponsorship.”
Loral Quinn continued: “We need to get more diversity in tech now, we don’t want to look back in twenty years’ time and realise that we didn’t take action when it was most needed.”
The cost for sponsoring a student through the Youth Academy in July is £3,000, it is also possible for organisations and individuals to cover the £10,000 per student costs for the 16-week Professional Software Developer and 14-week Professional Data Analysis programmes, while smaller contributions starting at £1,000 can also be made.
Loral Quinn added: “Across Glasgow and Edinburgh, there is a high percentage of secondary schools in Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) zones, and we really want to change the trajectory of young people by giving them an opportunity to transform their lives through jobs in tech.”
Toni Scullion, co-lead at Scottish Teachers Advancing Computing Science (STACS), set up in 2022 to advance Computing Science at school level, said: “CodeClan’s Youth Academy initiative provides a great stepping stone for kids leaving school, and we are massively encouraged to see the focus on increasing participation from such a marginalised and neglected area of society, particularly when we can see the level of untapped talent there. We hope CodeClan can continue to build critical mass here, and is widely sup-ported across the Scottish business community.”
Mark Logan, Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur, said: “CodeClan’s youth academy model is an outstanding initiative that creates genuinely life-changing opportunities for young people while simultaneously expanding the talent pool for Scotland’s tech companies, and all using CodeClan’s proven train-ing excellence. With scaled participation from individuals and businesses across Scotland, the scheme could be transformational in both economic and societal terms. There’s no better way for the tech community to con-tribute to Scotland’s future.”
CodeClan has placed over 2,000 students with over 300 organisations, including hiring partners like Skyscanner, FanDuel, Baillie Gifford, DC Thomson, BlackRock, Tesco Bank, and Sainsbury’s Bank.
The CodeClan Youth Academy is closely linked to CodeClan’s Emerging Talent Fund, which was launched earlier this year in response to a shortage of women, LGBTQ, and people from underrepresented ethnic groups in tech.
About CodeClan
CodeClan is Scotland’s first and only not-for-profit digital skills bootcamp, aiming to transform careers and unlock opportunities for diverse talent through professional software development and professional data analysis training.
