Last week I attended the e-skills "Delivering Digital Wales" conference. Aside from the coffee and croissants (which were excellent!) some interesting ideas and information came out of it.

The recurring themes through the day were very clear:

• ICT is still a growing sector, with many employers reporting skills shortages, especially higher level skills (at Level 3 and above) in the 'harder' skills areas such as coding and telecoms.  (Incidentally, if you are one of those employers, we've got a number of apprenticship places still to fill this year!)

• Very few enter the professional directly from education. There is a gap in the 'pipeline' of new talent. GCSE Computer courses are down.

• The ICT professional workforce is aging and not being replaced figures given were that on 19% of the professional ICT workforce are under 30, with 42% over 40.

• There is still a gender gap in the practitioner/technical strand, something being addressed by projects such as Computer Clubs for Girls (CCfG).

• Realistic work placements make a huge difference in getting and keeping long term work after qualifying.

• The importance of collaboration between education providers (of all sorts) and employers in ensuring people come out of education with the skills that industry needs.

The video shown summarised some of these issues.

Karen Price spoke about some of the new initiatives from e-skills, including the National Skills Academy, and the creation of a dedicated Welsh Big Ambition site - in particular stressing that more content is needed from employers.  So get involved!

The Deputy Minister for Skills Jeff Cuthbert gave a broad overview of the key points as they relate to the Welsh Government priorities, including stressing the need for soft skills - communications, flexibility, continuous development and updating of skills.

"It's easier to come up with a new idea than let go of things which worked for you two years ago"

He also highlighted the inclusion issues, the need to re-skill existing adult learners and the work being done to support the rollout of Next Generation broadband.  Particular mention was made of the cost saving which could be achieved by having more government services delivered purely online.

The importance of employers having a voice in shaping the curriculum and the updating of ICT qualifications to meet changes in the market and technology was raised and would come up again and again through the day.

Ronan Miles from BT, the chair of the Welsh Employer Forum spoke next, giving some personal examples of how technology has changed the way we interact and the opportunities open as a result - whether a simple IM message to a parent with an 'empty nest' to remote selling of products and services!

Interestingly, he compared ICT skills with something as core as writing - learned from the very beginning of your education, and developed further through education, training and work.

Kevin Streater from the Open University was the next speaker.  He pointed out that they have over 13,000 students studying ICT-related subjects with them.  He also stressed one of the recurring points - the requirement for close links with employers, and also the recognition offered by professional bodies.  He gave the example of their Level 4 and 5 Apprenticeships, working with employers and SFIA to design the programme, leading to a Foundation Degree.

He also discussed their new "My Digital Life" course which looks hugely exciting, covering everything from Facebook to actually programming a circuit board (using a variation of the Scratch software that we often use with our in-house traineeship learners).

I'd opted for this one as delivering apprenticeship frameworks in User and Practitioner roles is one of our main activities (and, again, if you're an employer reading we've got learners waiting if you want them!) .  There were quite a lot of people in the session not directly involved in delivering the framework, and not really enough time to get into the nitty gritty but I managed to clarify a few points about the transition to Essential Skills.  There was some suggestion that the IC

T one will become part of the framework - the reason for which I couldn't quite fathom out on a framework entirely focused on ICT!  The argument for was that the user and presenting information skills could be weak even among technical practitioners.  Something which I must admit we do see.

Again the need for transferable skills and this popular word 'professionalism' came up.

There was some debate as to whether the various 'competing' standards were a help or hindrance - with e-skills, SFIA, BCS etc all having their own definitions and levels.

The overview of the new SASW Frameworks was a good summary and reminder of a few things we knew already and some which I, at least, didn't:

• ITQ has a combined Knowledge and Competence qualification (which is why it looks like it's missing it's 'tech cert' which has caused some head scratching in our internal meetings and is the reason for the new mandatory units)

• There is absolutely and utterly no flexibility in terms of proxy qualifications.  (Something which caused mutters of discontent around the room from at least as many employers as it did among providers, which was interesting).

• Application for frameworks will have to be done by apprentices themselves, but they can authorise a third party to apply on their behalf - this is a bit of a work in progress but centres already using it have had learners sign an agreement when finishing their portfolio to allow this.

England also decided that "IT User wasn't a job role", to which end it's been renamed and the standards tweaked to become "IT Application Specialist" (I'm not making this up...)  This change will probably carried over to Wales as well some time next year.

Some of the problems discussed were version control - the whole framework number changes when alterations are made and it can be unclear who filters those changes down to centres (SEMTA?  e-skills?  Awarding Bodies?  No one - centres must check the website?)  One provider who's name I didn't catch had given up on downloading standards and told his staff to print them directly from the website, as we used to do with eQuals, because they altered so often and it was the only way to be sure you had the up to date version.

The problem of not having enough practitioners came up and several centres pointed out that part of the problem with recruitment was having to profile months and months in advance before you had any real idea how many employers and learners you'd have step up.

Moving onto a broader discussion it was also suggested that schools careers advisors and especially parents don't know enough about apprenticeships to give good advice to young people wanting to go into IT.

Also outlined were some of the current services and projects being undertaken by e-Skills.

The National Skills Academy for IT offers a huge range of courses in both technical and soft skills for (at the moment) £95 /year and is aimed particularly at SMEs who would not otherwise have the budget to buy in equivalent expertise and training.  Another source of subsidised funding was also highlighted from the Software Alliance Wales.

Also demonstrated was a "Professional Profile" tool which allowed you to map your current skills against the National Occupational Standards and Levels in order to identify skills needs.  The idea is that it will also link to suitable training.  Other suggested uses were staff evaluations and job descriptions.  Should be launching officially in the autumn.

There was a lot of discussion about a pilot project using a conjunction of e-learning and once-a-week attendance in Cardiff to develop programming skills for graduates and unemployed young people, but I didn't catch enough detail to look it up when I got back!  If anyone knows more, please get in touch!

e-skills Professional Placements Workshop

I went to this one hoping to pick up some tips for our Traineeship and Apprenticeship programmes, and while it was obviously fairly heavily focused on undergraduate programmes, there was some interesting overlap.  Similar feedback from employers about the lack of soft skills, to the point that there were gentle chuckles when the notion of students 'taking responsibility' for their learning was mentioned.  The importance of a good understanding of the business world was especially stressed.

From the point of view of getting employers on board, word of mouth seemed to trump most things, with successful students being among the best 'advert' for it.  In contrast to what we're finding at present the scheme has a shortage not of employers but of students!

An interesting point was that placements are also an opportunity to actually work out if something is not what you want to do after all and this is equally valuable.

Consensus was that placements started being most effective after around a three month settling in period.  Interesting to us as our younger learners tend to do a maximum of three months - I wonder if the funding structure means we're pulling them out just as they're starting to settle in...

This was far and away the most enthusiastic of the workshops and the overall theme was that in too many cases schools  are actively putting people off Computing as a subject by focusing too heavily on wooly 'ICT' qualifications which are purely application skills (and if the standard of, for example, PowerPoint which our school leavers arrive with is representative, they don't even do that very well.)

There appears to be a 'gap' in the delivery.  Primary school have a more integrated ICT curriculum, and do things with floor robots and control systems and Logo-like languages.  Universities have Computer Science and programming degrees, but in the middle there's this sag in the uptake of Computing GCSEs and A-Levels.

Young people need to be re-inspired about Computing as a subject and it needs to be integrated into the STEM agenda (covering as it does the S the T and the M all in one go!).  It needs to be seen not as "a difficult one" but as a challenging and valuable one.

Some of the projects to fill in these gaps were discussed, with the Swansea Technocamps programme being one of the most exciting.  This can be delivered in-school or on campus and has online resources to support it as well as being able to provide guidance to those wanting to delivering it in their own setting (including work based learning hopefully).  It uses a variety of software and languages from Scratch to Alice to Java and is available to 11-19 year-olds in Converge areas of Wales.

Time ran out on us on this workshop which was a pity as I think most of us could have carried on for some time!

Good to end on a high note and all enthused to go away and do something!  The feedback forms for the day also stressed this with a question on "What steps will you take next?" in addition to the usual run of tickboxes.  (And we'd be warned we "Wouldn't leave the building alive" without filling them in too!)

A few minor disappointmentss - the connectivity in the venue was poor.  No free wifi and the main conference room in a sort of blackhole for 3G signal.  In spite of this the Twitter stream was fairly active, under the hashtag #digitalwales and the corridor discussions were lively.

Simultaneous translation for Welsh was on offer which showed willing, but it was a pity more attention wasn't drawn to it - even if the main speakers hadn't planned to deliver in Welsh, there could have been a reminder that questions could be asked in either language.  The content itself was very Wales-centric which was a refreshing change.  So often at these things the differences in the funding and curriculum in Wales can feel like a bit of an afterthought - here it was fundamental.

To me, work based learning did feel rather like the poor relation again, with a lot of focus on school and FE/HE even when it came to apprenticeships.  It was a pity the Pathways to Apprenticeship seminar for example was only open to FE Colleges - when WBL is where a lot of those apprentices will end up afterwards - it would have been nice to see some joined up thinking between types of providers.

Overall though, a good day - a chance to get re-enthused about what we do, while still managing to be more than a talking shop.  The Wrodle below is of my notes for the day -- perhaps more indivatice of our interests at ITeC than the dominant themes of the day, but interesting nonetheless.