World Youth Skills Day: MyTutor launch tech courses to prepare students for future-facing careers

15 July marks World Youth Skills Day, a day dedicated to the importance of equipping young people with skills for the future. This year, World Youth Skills Day arrives amid the UK tech sector growing at a rapid pace, with job opportunities at a ten-year high and nearly 15,000 new tech jobs needing to be filled, a new report by CompTIA has revealed. Now, to prepare students to be in the best position to take advantage of these opportunities, MyTutor – the UK’s most trusted online tutoring platform – launches their interactive and engaging tech summer courses, allowing students to prepare for the upcoming competitive semester, find new passions, and start thinking about their future through courses such as programming with Python, creating video games, and coding with Minecraft.

In a recent survey of parents across the country, MyTutor, highlighted the shared concerns over how schools teach digital skills to support pupils’ future careers. 45% agreed that the future job market’s increasing focus on digital and technological skills meant that the current school curriculum did not serve their child’s career progression and was not fit for purpose in supporting their child’s career aspirations. One in four parents agreed that their child was inspired to learn about STEM field subjects in order to pursue their future career.

However, as the current curriculum stands, there are significant obstacles to achieving their goals. Despite their best efforts, schools also struggle to find enough teachers with the appropriate skill set to teach these lessons. This means that too many children are not learning the most up-to-date technical skills that employers are crying out for.

Key stats:

44% of parents agree that the national curriculum doesn’t inspire students to pursue future-facing jobs
45% of parents agree that what their child is taught in school does not provide them with the skills they need to succeed in the future job market (tech, software design, app development)
26% of parents agree that their child has become more inspired to learn about STEM field subjects, in order to pursue a career that aids greater sustainability
16% of parents (agree that inspired by the pandemic, their child now has aspirations to work within the mental health sector and medical arena
13% of parents agree that their child now wants to pursue a STEM career as a result of the pandemic
35% of parents agree that they don’t know how to support their child’s career aspirations because career options have changed so much since they were at school

While the integration of technology into contemporary society is widely recognised as the norm and deemed a necessary skill in the world of work, there is a significant drought of technology skills in our current education system. With research from the Learning and Work Institute at WorldSkills UK showing that 92% of businesses agree that having basic digital know-how is essential for employees, and a further 76% concurring that digital skills shortage would impact the effectiveness of their business, there needs to be a call-to-action.

Offering a beacon of hope, MyTutor is delighted to have added Tech courses to their Summer Courses schedule, to help children aged 9-17 develop their digital skills. MyTutor’s Summer Courses support young people to learn the digital skills which will be essential for their future careers as requested by employers across the country. This means that the platform can offer coding and digital classes alongside their tutoring support, with extra-curricular classes covering programming with Python, creating video games, and coding with Minecraft. The practical classes will ensure students are able to come away from their digital lessons with clear evidence of what they have learned and can easily build on their existing skills over time.

MyTutor will be hosting 75 new courses throughout the summer, where kids aged 13-18 can take part in creative and educational programmes tailored to them. From courses in creative arts and cultural issues, to tech subjects, science, and reading clubs, rounded off with expert help in planning careers and university, MyTutor’s courses have been designed to make learning fun, exciting and interactive. Kids learn in groups of up to eight, so they can enjoy being social while discovering something new. The full list of courses along with booking information is available here, prices start at £90 for a 5-day course.

Bertie Hubbard, CEO and Co-Founder of MyTutor, discusses:

“The workforce of tomorrow is becoming more and more focussed on digital skills, which hasn’t yet been represented in the current national curriculum. Through MyTutor’s offering of summer courses we want to expose students to subjects they may not come across in school and show them new pathways and possibilities for the future they may not have thought about.

“When we surveyed a group of UK parents recently, 13% told us that their child has decided to pursue a career in a STEM subject so they can make this one the last pandemic. And with so much disruption to their education the last few years, it’s more important than ever that kids get the academic support and mentoring they need to achieve their ambitions.

“With MyTutor, kids can get support in STEM subjects, mentoring for particular courses and expert UCAS guidance. So, if a teen wants to become a doctor they can get science lessons from a tutor who’s also a medical student. They’ll use their recent exam experience to help them get the grades they need, and also mentor them with advice on which universities to apply for and how to nail the admissions process. With the dedicated support of a tutor and their passion to see the back of pandemics, we can inspire the scientists of tomorrow.”