Useful Resources
Future.Now Directory of Digital Upskilling
For young people
Skills for Tomorrow
BT’s ambitious digital skills programme - making a public commitment to give 10 million people in the UK the skills they need for the future. Working in partnership with leading digital skills organisations, the programme provides free resources, information and webinars to help people with the challenges they may face during this difficult time.
For children and teachers:
Our ambition is to reach 5 million primary school children by 2025 through BT’s Barefoot Computing programme which trains teachers to help primary school children learn, think and thrive in a digital world. Barefoot has reached more than 2.8m children through 86,000 teachers since it started five years ago. In response to Covid, we’ve added fun, interactive resources to help parents support their children with computational thinking at home. Teachers can also access Barefoot home learning to share with their class here: www.barefootcomputing.org/homelearning
For young people and job-seekers of all ages:
BT’s Work Ready programme aimed to help 5,000 18 to 24-year-olds from diverse backgrounds acquire new digital skills, work experience, employment or further education through a 2 week course. More than 2,700 people have graduated from Work Ready since 2015. In response to Covid we have been offering a series of interactive webinars to boost people’s skills and confidence, opening this offering to all job-seekers. https://www.bt.com/beyond-limits/workready
In addition to this, we have recently launched ‘Stand Out Skills’ which focuses on helping job seekers of all ages.
This provides:
- Free daily support to jobseekers, helping them to gain confidence and make their skills stand out at every step of their job search.
- Support both young jobseekers out of education looking to start their career, and older jobseekers who may be finding themselves unemployed for the first time in a long time or needing to change career path.
- Focus on helping people discover their potential, make their own luck, write job applications that can stand out from the crowd, interview with confidence and stay resilient in today’s challenging job market.
Furthermore, BT has partnered with Jobcentre Plus to help young jobseekers to get into work. This partnership is part of a wider BT Skills for Tomorrow Work Ready programme, a scheme to help jobseekers gain work experience, skills and confidence to secure jobs. It is running virtually across the country. Whilst each regional webinar works with local job centres for referrals, the offer does not preclude referrals from other channels and is not limited by region. Young People aged 18-24 ,who are signed up to Jobcentres across these locations will have the opportunity to join a free webinar session, designed to give young jobseekers reliable advice from experts and mentors and looking at how they can improve their digital and employability skills to get themselves “work ready”. For any further details on the DWP Job Centre Plus programme please contact [email protected]
For Small Businesses:
BT’s Small Business Support Scheme
BT announced its largest ever commitment to Britain’s 5.8 million small businesses. Our Small Business Support Scheme outlines a range of new measures designed to boost small business confidence, connectivity and cashflow, to help kick-start recovery and growth in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The ten initiatives have been developed to address some of the biggest pressure points being felt by small businesses, as revealed by our research with Small Business Britain.
Digital Skills and mentoring
Through a partnership with Google Digital Garage, we ran many face-to-face sessions to support small business owners and employees with digital skills training. In response to Covid we are running a host of free webinars with experts to help SMEs cope. Topics include digital marketing, finance, expanding a business etc. We have recently announced an extension to our partnership with Google, to equip the UK’s small businesses with new digital skills and build upon their existing mentoring programmes, to help small business owners bounce back stronger from the impact of Covid-19. With Google we have delivered a revamped series of over 50 co-branded online training sessions for small firms who are looking to build their digital skills - on a range of digital skills topics such as building a social media strategy; creating new videos on YouTube; and getting your business visible on Google. www.bt.com/withGoogle
In addition to Google’s commitment to deliver 10,000 hours of free mentoring over 12 months to small firms and charities, BT has pledged to deliver free 1-to-1 coaching sessions to at least 1,000 small businesses, with hundreds of mentors recruited from across the company to deliver virtual digital skills training sessions. Mentoring opportunities can be found at ‘Digital Boost’
For older and vulnerable people:
Prior to Covid we created 90 BT-sponsored community training centres across the UK in partnership with the Good Things Foundation to offer people face-to-face support. In response to Covid we’re helping older people, vulnerable people and those who are less confident in their digital skills to stay in contact with family and friends, keep up to date, and get the best healthcare advice with easy to use and access information. That includes guidance on accessing and understanding services online – such as local council, NHS and GOV.UK websites – advice on using video calling and social media and a guide to watching TV and listening to radio online.
For anyone working from home:
We’ve created guides include helping people to build digital skills, enhance well-being and work online effectively including working with LinkedIn Learning and Google Digital Garage.
For all
Top Tips for Tech
Last year we also launched ‘Top Tips for Tech’ which were short adverts shown on TV as well as online. These tips covered many topics such as Online safety, how to download podcasts, protecting your business online.
Tech Tips | Top Tips on Tech | BT
Hope United
Yesterday we launching BT’s “Draw The Line” campaign to stand against hate speech and abuse on social media. The campaign aims to address the problem by raising awareness of the impact of online hate and advocating change, as new research commissioned by BT and YouGov shows that over 1 in 10 have experienced some form of online abuse in the last year and over 1.8 million people have experienced threatening behaviour online in the last 12 months.
CONNECTIVITY
Home Essentials product
Last week we announced our new at-cost social tariff product called ‘BT Home Essentials’ to support households on low income. The product will be available in June.
Free BT wi-fi to pupils in need to access the internet at home
BT has extended its ‘Free BT Wi-Fi to support learning in lockdown’ offering until the end of December 2021. This offers schools free Wi-Fi vouchers to enable pupils in need to access the internet at home.
