Technology education programme for girls to be offered in Welsh for the first time

AWS GetIT – an education programme designed to inspire 12-14 year old students, especially girls, to consider a future in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) – is to be made available in Welsh for the first time. This is with the aim of attracting interest from schools all over Wales to sign up and inspire more students from diverse backgrounds to pursue a future career in technology.

A recent Public First report stated that levels of cloud adoption in Wales stood at 44%. The same report showed that by increasing cloud adoption to London levels, gross added value (GVA) would increase by £1.8 billion. But while the cloud presents new opportunities for growth, the AWS Global Digital Skills Study revealed that there is an acute skills training shortfall in the UK today, with an estimated 11.6 million people, or 35% of the country’s workforce, requiring digital skills training in order to keep pace with technological advancements and gain new digital skills to succeed in their careers.

To help meet this growing demand, Amazon made a global commitment to help 29 million people globally grow their digital skills with free cloud computing skills training by 2025. AWS’s portfolio of digital skills programmes provides opportunities for the people of Wales at whatever stage they find themselves: at school, at college, at university, as well as the option to reskill and build a new career path. Other programmes offered by AWS and available in Wales include:

• AWS re/Start is a skills development and job training program that prepares learners for careers in the cloud by providing AWS Cloud skills development and job opportunities to diverse populations.

• AWS Academy which provides higher education institutions with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognised certifications and in-demand cloud jobs.

• AWS Educate which offers hundreds of hours of self-paced training and resources for new-to-cloud learners—including hands-on labs in the AWS Management Console.

To further support Welsh organisations looking to learn how to use cloud computing and build their cloud skills, AWS put on a range of events for local organisations and AWS customers for #Cloud Cymru Week 2023 from 17th-19th January. On 18th January, the company hosted an in-person reception for attendees to learn how the AWS GetIT programme and competition can help inspire more young learners to explore STEM careers.

“Recognising how important the language is to serve the Welsh community and our learners, our AWS GetIT programme content will be available in the local language for Welsh speaking schools. We made the decision to localise content into Welsh, as a direct result of feedback garnered from schools and educators. We hope that this will encourage even more schools to take part, and inspire students to think about a future career in technology, and enable more organisations to have the necessary skills to benefit from cloud in the future,” said Ken Harley, Head of UK&I Education, Amazon Web Services.

“Events such as #Cloud Cymru Week are vital in helping to inspire students, unemployed and those from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn new skills and jump-start a career in the computing sector. It’s exciting that the AWS GetIT programme is expanding in Wales and will be available to learners in Welsh and English this year here in Swansea. I’m sure that many of our schools and pupils will be looking to get involved and I’m looking forward to hearing about the impact this has,” said Swansea Council Leader, Rob Stewart.

A number of organisations in Wales are using AWS Cloud including the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Companies House, as well as Welsh Small & Medium Enterprises such as Milk and Convey Law. AWS’s parent company, Amazon also recently launched a new development site in Swansea where Veeqo, an ecommerce tech company Amazon acquired in 2021, builds tools for small businesses to grow and sell their products around the world.

“We are delighted to be supporting AWS at this year’s #Cloud Cymru Week. Working with AWS, we’ve made significant progress in developing our new and existing online services in recent years, benefitting our customers with greater choice for how and when they transact with us. Events like these are great for sharing best practice and help increase digital skills across the region,” said Brian Sullivan, Chief Technology Officer, DVLA.