BUSINESSiQ asked fintech experts Sage for their view of the STEM challenge facing the region. Here's what Cadence Willis, VP of the Sage Foundation, told us:
Sage is a proud global technology business, born and bred in the North East. Our worldwide engineering and innovation hub is based at our headquarters in the region so it should be no surprise that we are passionate advocates and supporters of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) agenda.
We see technology as key to our future and to add differentiation and weight to the UK economy. Ensuring that there are enough people in the workforce, with the right depth of technology skills is one of the most significant economic challenges the UK currently faces.
We believe all large organisations have a requirement, and indeed an obligation, to play a part in developing the skills required in society to support this
Ensuring Sage plays its part in equipping future generations to respond to these opportunities, is shaping our approach to building the workforce of tomorrow.
We have taken a wide-ranging approach to this; trying to reach young people at several points in their early career journey.
We have a well-established apprentice programme, with around 200 apprentices now employed across all parts of the business. This gives young people sustainable career options enabling them to earn and learn while taking their first practical step in career development.
In turn, this allows us to learn from the best and brightest young people while showcasing to them the scope of career options in the tech sector.
We also make considerable efforts to engage children well before they are considering their career options, making STEM accessible and fun in schools across the North East for children from as young as six.
Just two weeks ago we launched our latest programme called Tackling Insights, a five-week programme delivered in partnership with the Newcastle Rugby Foundation (NRF) aimed at making STEM subjects more accessible and engaging for regional school pupils.
The programme, launched at North Fawdon Primary School in Newcastle, also involves nine other North East schools and will reach 600 pupils aged nine to 11, with a particular focus on girls. Sage is the Official Insights Partner to Six Nations Rugby and the programme uses data and insights provided by the smart ball technology, used for the first time in both the Guinness Six Nations and the Tik Tok Women’s Six Nations Championships, to show the power of STEM in sport.
By working with NRF, we hope the partnership will bridge the skills gap in STEM subjects among young people, including those facing barriers to learning and playing the sport. The initiative will also touch on the sport’s core values, such as teamwork, respect, discipline, and sportsmanship.
According to the UK Commission for Employment & Skills, 43pc of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) vacancies are hard to fill. This is mainly down to a shortage of applicants with the required skills and experience.
Sage has an important role to play in not only plugging the skills gap, but inspiring young people to consider careers in STEM. This means developing programmes and partnering with brilliant organisations, such as NRF, to make STEM accessible and fun.
Last year, Sage Foundation partnered with The Institute for Engineering and Technology (IET) to extend the FIRST LEGO League in the UK and Ireland through a programme that challenges young people aged four to 16 to build robots and create innovative projects using LEGO bricks and components.
The simple formula of play and learning helps to break stereotypes and assumptions about who can engage with STEM and has led to FIRST LEGO League becoming one of the largest STEM challenges in the world, operating in 110 countries globally.
Partnering with the FIRST LEGO League and the Institution of Engineering and Technology in the North East, Sage is on track to train more than 14,000 young people in STEM skills, setting them up to thrive in the digital economy.
Initiatives such as this help the tech sector to become more diverse; one of the young girls taking part in a previous Lego League event said her favourite part was “programming the robots” – it is great to hear this and this is a great message for diversity in tech too.
We have all heard of the lack of women taking part in STEM subjects, so this is a brilliant way of encouraging women into tech particularly by instilling this as early as possible in the school curriculum.
Currently, just 25 per cent of the workforce in the tech sector is female. We need to provide platforms to encourage more females into tech roles and this is one of many ways we do this. Lego League encourages young people to design, create and build innovative solutions to help to ignite their minds to the world of tech and develop their skills.
The North Tyneside and Northumberland regional finals took place around a week ago. Over four energised days, 80 teams from 45 schools took part with the winning teams from each day progressing to the National Finals held in Harrogate in April.
At Sage we take a “tech for all” approach to our training, apprenticeship and grad programmes for good reason.
We want the UK to have the best tech curriculum in the world – this requires a fundamental rethink to technology and how we engage young people in it. What better place to champion this than from the North East.
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