PA Consulting Group Sets Programming Challenge to School Pupils, Students and IT Professionals to Help Tackle Talent Gap

PA Consulting Group Sets Programming Challenge to School Pupils, Students and IT Professionals to Help Tackle Talent Gap PR Newswire LONDON, September 6, 2012 LONDON, September 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- PA Consulting Group, in collaboration with Raspberry Pi, has challenged teams from schools, universities and businesses to utilise the Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer, to invent a computer programme that will benefit the world. The teams' invention can, for example, benefit the environment, enable the delivery of better care for others or make information more readily available or secure. Winning schools will receive £1000 and undergraduates and IT professionals win a salaried internship at PA. The teams of up to six can use their programming skills and the Raspberry Pi and have a budget of £50. They can use a limited amount of additional hardware and any software modules must be available as source code. The competition has been launched in response to a fall in programming skills and is aimed at increasing the numbers of skilled coders, developers and engineers. PA's recent report, "How to unlock sustainable growth in the UK" showed that leaders from the fastest growing technology and innovation sectors believe there are too few UK school children studying the core STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects and too few school leavers studying STEM subjects at university, meaning too few of our graduates are attracted to industry.