The pilot with Edinburgh College, Borders College, and West Lothian College is set to commence this summer with programme content delivered by Silicon Valley education platform Qwasar.

The move by CodeBase comes less than a year after CodeClan went into liquidation in August 2023, with CodeBase acquiring select assets from the digital skills academy and enabling around 80 students to complete courses in software development and data analysis later that year.

CodeBase says the relaunch is in response to high levels of industry demand for software development and data science expertise, an acute requirement for upskilling to address the digital skills gap, and the potential to accelerate economic impact.

CodeBase, which also runs the Scottish Government’s startup support programme Techscaler, is actively engaged in discussions with other colleges, and the public and corporate sectors, with a view to a Scotland-wide roll-out of CodeClan as early as next year.

Mark Logan, chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, said: “Establishing a route for people to switch careers into technology is vital to meeting the talent needs of Scotland’s tech sector. I’m particularly excited about the new CodeClan’s highly scalable delivery model.

“The three-way partnership between CodeBase, Qwasar, and Scotland’s college network makes possible a national scale programme, combining in-person and online training with world-class, constantly refreshed learning materials.

“By leveraging these assets in combination, the CodeClan model is also now significantly cheaper and removes the payment burden for employers too, which was a problematic area for the prior CodeClan model.”

Martin Boyle, VP of transformation and strategic relationships at CodeBase, said: “We have spent the last few months reassessing the CodeClan model, and with Qwasar in place we have a world-class content provider that is aligned with the latest needs of industry, delivered through the Scottish college network.

“While the pilot is relatively small and regionally-focused for now, we envisage Scotland-wide provision in due course.”

Qwasar Silicon Valley, which describes itself as “the only training provider that trains to Silicon Valley standards in software engineering”, was founded in 2019.

Scotland-born co-founder Jennifer Robertson added: “We are excited to see this launch alongside CodeBase. Our programmes train to the advanced technical level required by industry and are competency-based, meaning learners build competency in programming step by step.

“Anyone can do it – yes, it takes effort and there is a lot of coding, but it’s these kinds of courses and hands-on learning pathways that allow anyone to succeed and turn cities and countries into talent powerhouses. The time for this is now!”

As part of the pilot, a number of faculty members from each college, in addition to representatives from CodeBase, will undertake related training with Qwasar. Qwasar specialises in industry-led techniques of learning, with courses in full stack development, backend software engineering, data science, DevOps and cloud, AI and machine learning.

Jackie Galbraith, principal at West Lothian College, said: “We initially reached out to CodeClan as soon as we heard of the challenges they faced to see if we could help in any way, and so we’re delighted to be one of the pilot colleges in this new and exciting partnership.

“Scotland’s colleges have an excellent track record in providing a wide range of opportunities, enabling students, regardless of their backgrounds, to develop the digital skills required to start new careers or develop and thrive in existing jobs in this sector which is so critical to Scotland’s economic future.

“The three colleges are ideally placed to support the programme and the students undertaking this ground-breaking initiative and we look forward to working with Qwasar and CodeBase.”