Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what initiatives are being sponsored by her Department to support and grow the UK digital skills base.

DCMS has sponsored many programs that have helped support and grow the UK digital skills base. Some of them include the following:

• Through grant funding, we have supported Ada, the National College for Digital Skills to build and pilot an innovative, online platform that will teach coding skills using elements of peer-to-peer and gamified learning. The first school-age students started using the platform in June 2017 in a pilot that was rolled out to 30 schools across the UK. Over 1,000 students – more than double the initial target of 500 – benefited from this learning

  
  

• DCMS is leading on a new digital skills partnership programme which will convene stakeholders across the public, private and charity sector to tackle the digital skills gap in a co-ordinated and coherent way. The DSP will also deliver on the 4 million training places announced in the Digital Strategy

  
  

• DCMS is also leading on a number of short and long-term government interventions to address the cyber security skills gap, funded through the National Cyber Security Programme including a programme targeted at 14-18 year olds and a range of activity in further and higher education.