February 2025 - June 2025.
Tech Employment Skills Team, Salford (TESTS) is a targeted scheme supporting young NEET people into tech. It comprises two tandem tech careers pilots (one online, one in person) that will provide skills training, career guidance and work-readiness skills to broaden participants’ access to fulfilling careers.
Through TESTS, MadLab wants to create a new pathway for engaging hard-to-reach and disengaged NEETs in tech: taking them from basic skills-building, to meaningful training, and relevant experience of work. TESTS has a clear goal: to move young people who are NEET into employment. As such, there is also a strong focus on CV and covering letter support, as well as a clear end-goal of finding bespoke career opportunities for young people at the end of each of the two pilot programmes.
Why is the project needed?
Salford’s population is growing and whilst this is positive for the city in many ways, it's causing pressure within the post 16 provision landscape. There are currently 350 people who are NEET in the city (that are known), and the council simply can't meet the volume of demand they are experiencing. Not least because - due to funding cuts - they have lost nine NEET support organisations in the last eight years.
From a MadLab perspective, we know that tech training across Greater Manchester is erratic: in terms of it being offered at all. And when it is, it is often sub-par (that is a post for another day, but something we've long felt strongly about). Lots of young people we speak to end up leaving education wanting to get into creative digital jobs - but tell us that they 'cannot bear' (other words have been used) ICT. So our focus is on game design (through which we'll be teaching employability skills too) and we'll also be leaning on some friends from major employers at Media City to bring some exclusive behind-the-scenes access.
TESTs is not a sticking plaster. We won't solve long-term problems in a few weeks. But what we can offer is high quality and engaging learning from a team with lived-experience. We'll keep supporting people for as long as they need our help, too.