Dundee & Angus Code Academy

I attended a presentation by Simon Hewitt, of Dundee & Angus College, yesterday morning about his college’s new programming initiative. The meeting was held in the Scottish Government offices.

Simon explained that the Code Academy has taken over two years to turn from an idea into a reality. He attributed the initial concept to a keynote talk at a Heads of Computing event. The Academy officially launched a few weeks ago. It’s a collective effort by the college, the local Council, local business and special interest groups such as Dundee Science Centre.

The aim of the Academy is to stimulate interest in software development. It has four strands: (1) a schools strand to engage local pupils in programming and also to provide CPD to local teachers; (2) a college strand to increase the number of students doing software development in the college; (3) an industry strand, which includes Modern Apprenticeships and staff placements in local companies; and (4) an events strand, which involves code clubs and other programming-related events.

I was very impressed. A huge amount of effort had went into getting the Code Academy off the ground and it sounds really worthwhile, providing the people of Dundee with opportunities to upskill and find well paid, interesting jobs. It was particularly pleasing to see that SQA awards figured in most of the strands, such as the NPA in Software Development for local school pupils and the HND Software Development for college students.

CodeClan uses a different model for producing programmers, providing short, intense programming courses with the aim of creating job-ready coders. It, too, uses SQA awards, in this case the new PDA in Software Development.

Please contact Simon for more information about the Code Academy.

Bobby Published 19/02/2016