The last few years have seen no shortage of dire warnings about the skills gap and its impact on the economy.  This has been especially pronounced in STEM areas where employers are struggling to find the right talent.

IBM have taken matters into their own hands via the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (or P-Tech).

The concept, which was launched in 2011, mixes regular public school education with community college courses and paid work experience.  It was rolled out in New York through a partnership between IBM, New York City and the City University of New York.

The aim of P-Tech is to fundamentally alter what it means to undertake vocational education.  It differs from most schools in that it offers a six year program as opposed to the traditional four, at the end of which students hopefully obtain an associate degree that hasn’t cost them a dime and a chance of work at IBM.

A new kind of curriculum

The curriculum has been designed with a strong input from IBM, and the focus is very STEM related, albeit with exposure to the usual school subjects such as English and geography.

The company offers students a range of mentoring and internship options, and they regard their P-Tech work as a significant improvement upon previous philanthropic efforts that ended with the writing of a check.

Thus far the results have been impressive indeed, with P-Tech empowering many students from disadvantaged backgrounds the chance to really get on, although the program is still in a very early stage so understandably numbers are a little thin on the ground thus far.

Nevertheless, other districts are exploring the scheme to, with some 40 schools having signed up from around the country.  IBM hope to open 100 P-Tech schools by 2016, which will collectively educate some 100,000 pupils.

The template for running a P-Tech school is available for free on the PTech.org website and IBM are open with the approach, which they hope will be adopted by other companies.

Thus far, there are signs of similar projects being backed by the likes of Lockheed Martin and Microsoft.

With technical skills continuing to be strongly demanded by employers, it’s interesting to see a growing number of them taking the matter into their own hands.

This nascent trend will certainly be one to monitor with interest.