CodeClan relaunches to meet "high demand" for skilled workers

Technology incubator CodeBase plans to relaunch CodeClan this summer, following “high levels” of demand for skilled workers.  

Three Scottish colleges and a Silicon Valley coding specialist will support the initiative.  

Edinburgh College, Borders College and West Lothian College will host the pilot, with programme content delivered by US-based firm Qwasar Silicon Valley. 

Mark Logan, chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, said: “Establishing a route for people to switch careers into technology is vital to meeting the talent needs of Scotland’s tech sector.   

“I’m particularly excited about the new CodeClan’s highly scalable delivery model.  The three-way partnership between CodeBase, Qwasar, and Scotland’s college network makes possible a national-scale programme, combining in-person and online training with world-class, constantly refreshed learning materials." 

Plans are for a Scotland-wide roll-out of CodeClan by next year, CodeBase has said. 

“By leveraging these assets in combination, the CodeClan model is also now significantly cheaper and removes the payment burden for employers too, which was a problematic area for the prior CodeClan model," Logan said.  

The digital skills academy went into liquidation in August last year after struggling to place students into employment.  

Later that same month, CodeBase acquired CodeClan assets, enabling around 80 students to complete the courses.  

The relaunch looks to boost the software developer and data science workforce, offer upskilling opportunities and have the potential to accelerate economic impact, CodeBase has said. 

The incubator is also in charge of the Scottish Government’s flagship start-up programme, Techscaler, which earlier this year launched its first hub In Silicon Valley.  

Qwasar Silicon Valley, launched in 2019, and describes itself as the “only training provider” to train on “Silicon Valley standards in software engineering”. It will offer students courses on artificial intelligence and machine learning, backend software engineering, DevOps and cloud, and data science.  

Scotland-born co-founder Jennifer Robertson claims, that its courses train offers hands-on learning that could turn Scotland into a “talent powerhouse”.