The Institute of Coding (IoC), a government-funded consortium of educators, industry, outreach groups and professionals, has announced that it will be working with BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, to develop a new industry-relevant accreditation standard for digital skills courses across the UK. This new accreditation standard aims to ensure that learners have the skills that industry needs, making them more employable.

The accreditation standard will recognise both academic and professional achievements and will assess students’ ability to learn and apply their skills to real-world situations. It will also independently signal the quality of these courses to external organisations by benchmarking IoC courses against other national and international offerings.

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“Working with the BCS improves the quality of the new IoC accreditation standard and will ensure that courses developed by IoC partners meet the high standards required by industry,” said Rachid Hourizi, Director at the IoC.  “By rolling out cutting-edge, flexible courses, the IoC is helping to upskill existing employees and enable future generations to develop high-quality technical skills.”

The IoC will be collaborating with the BCS on the new accreditation standard using the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) as the basis. The Open University and IBM, both IoC partners, are also working on the development of this framework.

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Bill Mitchell, Director of Policy, BCS, said: “Time and again employers have told us they want graduates to be able to evidence they have both the academic expertise and the professional skills that they need. We are delighted to be working with the IoC to develop a new standard that will give employers the assurance they have been asking for. This relationship between the IoC and BCS will go some way to helping to ensure we close the country’s graduate skills gap.”