Why we're launching the Make it Digital Traineeships

When the BBC Make it Digital campaign was launched by Tony Hall at the start of this year its message was clear: inspiring a new generation to get creative with coding and digital technology. The reason for doing that is equally clear: the UK is going to face a massive gap in digital skills. So, with that in mind, we've got together with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Skills Funding Agency, other employers and training providers to create up to 5000 digital traineeships.



It is the biggest initiative of its kind. In this ground-breaking collaboration between the BBC and its partners, the BBC is using its content to deliver some of this digital training, also working with other employers and people across the digital and tech sector. There hasn't been something of this size before. Trainees will get proper work experience on the scheme. That will help employers across England to find digital savvy young people to come work for them, and in the process they’ll get young people with a great skills who will help them get where we need to be. It’s win-win.

In broad terms the successful applicants will get about 5 weeks of proper training in digital skills, social media, building websites, and creating videos for the web. They will create their own content to demonstrate the skills they've acquired. They'll get employability skills which is really important for any pre-employment traineeship - budgeting, project management, teamworking, English and Maths - and then at the end of it they get a proper structured work placement. All the companies selected for the placement scheme are organisations which need employees with digital skills.

The BBC and other employers across the country could fill the positions we advertise relatively straightforwardly because of the volume of applications received. But, we need to gear ourselves up for a slightly different future which needs different skills and outlooks. If we're going to get a different kind of work force, a workforce which better reflects the whole of the UK, we’ve got to both help young people to be able to apply for jobs with us by giving them those employability skills, but we've also got to go out there and find different people. I think the combination of both those things is why this scheme is incredibly important.

Diversity is a huge responsibility for the BBC. The organisation is paid for by everybody and it is our purpose to reflect all of the communities of the UK. My personal belief is that we can only really do that effectively if we the organisation look like the UK. This is not a box-ticking exercise or just being nice to people. It's doing our duty as a national publically-funded organization, and I think it will make us more creative. It's widely recognsied that more diverse teams will be more creative, and innovate more – and that’s what the BBC’s mission is.

The BBC Academy has played a huge part in this process. Our Head of New Talent Claire Paul has really worked hard to pull this partnership together and to design and coordinate the training. And we’re using training materials and content the Academy’s already created for BBC training to make it a very efficient training model. We're hoping there will be up to 5000 traineeships across the country and we're working hard to roll out the same opportunities to Wales and Scotland later this year. I really hope that Make it Digital and these traineeships can do for coding and the digital skills Britain needs what the BBC Micro did for home computing in the 1980s, and at the same time help thousands of young people improve their employment prospects.

• Find out more about how to apply for the Make it Digital Traineeships on the BBC Academy website.
• Read about Make it Digital Trainee Jordan Walker's experiences participating in the traineeship pilot scheme.