Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of demand for digital skills in London.

London is regarded as one of the world’s leading technology hubs generating over £30billion GVA (Gross Value Added) to the local economy, and sustaining over 300,000 jobs (according to Tech Nation 2017). However, it is predicted that within 20 years, 90% of all jobs will require some element of digital skills. Effective digital skills provision is essential to ensure the workforce is prepared for this and future technological changes.

Government is taking action at all stages of the education and training pipeline to help encourage young people into digital-related careers and meet demand for digital skills in and out of London. We have introduced computing as a statutory national curriculum subject at all four key stages, and have introduced a new Computer Science GCSE and A Level. We have also introduced an entitlement for adults who lack basic digital skills to undertake fully-funded training as part of the publicly-funded adult education offer. This will ensure adults have the opportunity to secure the basic digital skills that are increasingly needed to participate effectively in the labour market and day–to-day life.

We have also established the Digital Skills Partnership, which was announced in the Digital Strategy (March 2017) and launched in July 2017. The Partnership will bring together industry, local businesses, local government, charities and other organisations to bring greater coherence to provision of digital skills training at a national level and also support local level partnerships to increase digital capability.

In London specifically, we committed to devolve the adult education budget to London from 2019/20. We have also established Ada, the National College for Digital Skills. Ada opened in September 2016 and is supported by investment of £13 million from Government and £18 million from the Greater London Authority. The college will train 5,000 students over the next five years for a wide range of digital careers, such as software and database developers, user experience designers and tech entrepreneurs. Ada is also working with private sector organisations such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deloitte, IBM and Google.