Measuring the value of work experience
futureCodersSE offers a work experience programme for 16–19 year olds, or those under 25 who are preparing for the transition from full-time education into the workplace. We take on app development projects and recruit young developers to work with us on the project team. We pay travel expenses so that all are able to get to us and to work in our office space for 1.5 days per week.
We have an appraisal system based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). This framework defines competency at a variety of levels, mapped to specific skills related to work roles. We expect our young people to be progressing towards Level 2/3 on the framework for Programming/Software development and for Testing. We also expect that they will be progressing towards the same level of responsibility, which includes autonomy, influence, complexity of work activities, knowledge and business skills.
Our current team, Matt, Yusuf, Nnamdi and Alex are demonstrating great programming skills, all confident in developing simple programming solutions to specified problems, all reviewing their work and testing incrementally. It has been great to watch them grow in confidence, especially to see Alex become less nervous as the weeks go on about participating in stand ups. Her confidence, in just a few weeks has risen visibly and this is great to see. All our participants have become more focused, have taken control of their own learning and are working towards a point where they can move from the training phase to starting to contribute small pieces of code to our project. Maggy, our volunteer developer, has been really busy reviewing code and encouraging the ‘junior developers’ to comment, to look for efficient ways to code a problem and to ensure that their code fully meets the requirements of the challenge they have been given. They now all remember to push their code regularly!
For this project, an event management tool, we are really lucky to have Gerik working with us. Gerik is a developer with over 10 years experience in the industry. On a sabbatical, he has been leading the project and lending his expertise to ensuring that we are all on track, following good working practices and being assigned relevant and achievable tasks.
All our current ‘junior developers’ were identified as suitable for the work experience programme through the workshops we run. All attended our regular workshops at Strood Youth Centre where they can bring projects of their own or work on projects that we set. They can work individually or in groups and all learn from each other. Our volunteer, Ben, makes sure that all are involved and provides valuable technical support. This week we have welcomed a new volunteer, Eunan, a software engineer who brings a new perspective to the support.
We have been really lucky to be awarded a grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to purchase 7 new laptops. This means that we have capacity to take more students into our workshops as we don’t need to rely on them having their own laptops.
I was very pleased to be asked to run an ASDAN vocational taster course as part of a Be Yourself project being run by Medway Youth Services. A positive outcome for a young person on the project would be to secure some work experience. I can already identify one young person who might be suitable and hope that this learning experience might open that door.
We look for commitment and attendance on a course is a first stage in demonstrating this commitment. We hope to inspire young people to make a further commitment to continue their learning and it is this commitment that will make them suitable for our programme.
After Christmas we will be looking for some more recruits for the work experience programme and also to expand the programme so that we can take on more young people.
To do this we want to work with local companies where there is one or more people working in a software development role. We can support a student team to take on some of your smaller development projects. We can work in your office space or in ours, we can work with your developer or can bring Gerik in to take on the responsibility for the development. We can support you in making a software development work experience available to a small group of young people without the pain. You can support the young community and play a part in helping to develop the skills that your company and others will need.
Steve Jobs said that “Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”. The young people on our programme are not just developers of the future, they are effective, thinking, tech savvy, employees of the future. Making work experience available on a wider scale will increase opportunity.
If your company could work with us to offer an incredible opportunity to a small group of young people in Medway, please get in touch. You can get involved by facilitating a project or by funding a project.We would love to work with you. karen@futurecoders.org.uk
