British Council welcomes international delegation to Manchester’s Code Nation to learn how to create employable talent

A 41-strong delegation from Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria and Tanzania travelled to Manchester’s own Code Nation last week – accompanied by translators and British Council hosts – to learn how they create employable talent. The coding school and Apprenticeship specialists welcomed Ministers and business leaders and shared their experience of building industry-led training programmes.

The booming Manchester tech scene is credited as the best city in the UK for business growth and career development. However, Manchester is faced with a severe digital skills gap – a critical shortage of employable talent that impacts growth and profitability.

And it would appear that Manchester isn’t on its own, following a recent visit from Ministers and business leaders from Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria and Tanzania. The British Council, whose role is to promote the UK and its educational and employment opportunities, has recognised that Manchester deals with the skills gap better than other cities in the UK – evidenced by their visit to Code Nation’s city centre HQ in order to share best practice.

Andy Lord, Code Nation’s co-founder and CEO said: “We’ve created our own means of solving the digital skills gap by rethinking the way apprenticeships are delivered. Without apprenticeships, the labour market would really suffer. The shortfall would be enormous if we couldn’t access the vital government funding to train people with the highest demanded skillset in the world.

“Code Nation has pioneered a training programme that enables us to work directly with employers in need of talent, working together to engineer a business-led training course that’s laser-focussed on what’s happening in the tech landscape. The critical path to success is the engagement of businesses in every aspect of engineering a training programme if the end goal is creating employable talent.”