ScotlandIS follow up information from Committee meeting 8th December 2021 on Skills alignment and business needs.
We currently have two live Cohorts of Digital Critical Friends participating in schools in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire. By the turn of the year we will have Digital Critical Friends in just under 100 schools in Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire and the South of Scotland with an additional 70 schools being matched by the end of Q1 in 2022 in South Lanarkshire, East Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire.
At present 18% of matched schools offer a cyber security specific qualification with 26% of currently active Digital Critical Friends coming from a cyber specific field.
At present the gender split stands at 38% female participation across the actively matched schools with the North Lanarkshire matches showing a slightly higher participation level of 39% female involvement.
We are able to offer the programme in the areas mentioned above due to secured funding through a partnership with DYW Glasgow and have been able to expand out into the South of Scotland thanks to funding secured through Skills Development Scotland.
The programme is being well received by industry and we currently have a waiting list of interested Digital Critical Friends in areas like Aberdeen, Edinburgh and East and West Lothian where we have not yet been able to secure funding. It is the intention to roll this programme out nationally, however currently we are only able to introduce the programme in those locations that we have been able to secure funding for.
Our mantra for the programme is "you can't be what you can't see" so it is important for us to ensure that we are engaging with positive industry role models that are based in the locality to the schools they are matched with.
Although in its infancy, we know that this programme works based on initial feedback we have received from current participants, together with participating schools and Digital Critical Friends we continue to develop the programme, but this challenge becomes more difficult when we are always having to chase pots of funding to be able to keep up with the demand that is being generated for the programme in other areas.
Organisations already participating in the programme cover a wide variety of employers from our sector ranging for academic institutes, SME's and Start Ups and our larger corporate establishments.
A small number of the current Glasgow participants can be seen in Annex A.
If you have any additional questions or would like any further additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.