ESSA launches a Software Skills Strategy to bridge the software skills gap in Europe

To bridge the software skills gap, ESSA (European Software Skills Alliance) launches a Software Skills Strategy for Europe — it is a stepping stone to answering the lack of software professionals and the future market’s demand for software skills.

The strategy presents perspectives and expert recommendations to skill, upskill, and reskill individuals into high demand professional software roles. It sets the direction of the work ahead under three important pillars: training, education, and validation. They are the starting points to design up to date, market-oriented VET (Vocational Education and Training) curricula and programmes for software skills in 2022.

• Train individuals with self-paced and work-based learning. ESSA promotes increased access to the educational offering by addressing the main roadblocks to skilling, upskilling, and reskilling individuals into in-demand software roles.
• Educate for roles. ESSA supports the development of flexible but widely applicable educational profiles along with specific VET curricula and programmes that are relevant to the software roles profiles.
• Enable validation across borders. ESSA encourages international mobility by supporting portable and flexible recognition of the learning outcomes at the EU level.

Background

We have about 8 million ICT specialists in Europe which is far behind the 20 million target set by the European Commission. Meanwhile, the European software sector is growing — 45% of organisations surveyed estimate they will need more Developers in the next five years. There is also a strong immediate need for more DevOps experts and Technical specialists. ESSA wants to deliver the learning instruments people need to meet this demand for software skills.

About ESSA

ESSA (European Software Skills Alliance) is a transnational project funded under the Erasmus+ programme to boost software skills in Europe and re-aligning the educational offering and the market’s demand.

ESSA Consortium

Full partners

Adecco Formazione, AICA, AKMI, AMETIC, ASIIN Consult, BCS Training, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Codecool, DIGITALEUROPE, Digital Technology Skills, Global Knowledge France, Global Knowledge Netherlands, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, Hellenic Open University, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Irish Computer Society, IVSZ, MODIS, UNINFO, University of Ljubljana, Warsaw School of Computer Science.

Associated partners

Amazon Web Services, European Schoolnet, General Assembly, IT Professionalism Europe, NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute.