Amazon Future Engineer is a childhood-to-career programme aimed at inspiring and educating students from lower-income backgrounds to try computer science and coding.
Amazon is committed to helping young people – particularly those from lower-income backgrounds – to develop and learn computer science skills so they have equal opportunities in the future world of work. By giving students and teachers the chance to access computer science skills training they believe Amazon Future Engineer can help close the computer science skills gap. They firmly believe that household income should not define how well a child does at school. Amazon Future Engineer launched in the US in 2018 and the UK launch was the first international expansion of the programme.
Students, university graduates and primary school teachers can apply to different stages of the Amazon Future Engineer programme.
For primary, Amazon has collaborated with non-profit organisation Code.org to create Hour of Code: Dance Party, an interactive dance-themed online coding tutorial that gives students the opportunity to code characters to dance to songs from leading artists.
For secondary, Amazon is working with education charity Teach First to support the recruitment and training of 50 secondary school computer science teachers and to support the development of over 200 Teach First Careers Leaders. The computer science teachers will be placed in schools serving lower-income communities.
For students wishing to pursue computer sciences in higher education, Amazon is funding 100 apprenticeships in software development engineering, solutions architecture, automation and advanced mechatronics, enabling a diverse range of applicants to enter the computer science field. Participants will benefit from on-the-job work experience and classroom-based learning. Amazon is also funding 20 bursaries for students studying computer science at four UK universities, enabling students from lower-income backgrounds to pursue technology careers.
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