A NEW course providing specialist training to tackle future cybercrime will be available to pupils at UTC Swindon in September.

The Foundation-level Cyber Security Award will give 16 to 18-year-olds the chance to get work experience in the field, soft skills training and technical advice from some of the biggest tech firms in the world.

Principal at UTC Swindon Jon Oliver said: “We are looking for highly-talented young students to make Swindon a town to be reckoned with.

“It goes without saying that we expect our students to hit grades, but we expect them to push themselves to become highly knowledgeable, highly skilled, and ultimately, highly employable.

“We are actively recruiting students who are curious, thirsty for knowledge, motivated to learn. Our broad digital curriculum and the exciting new facilities, including the Fujitsu Innovation Hub, put us at the forefront of specialist technology education in the UK, offering Swindon students an education that few other areas in the country can provide.”

The technical college is part of a nationwide initiative to put computing knowledge at the heart of the STEM subjects it provides, called the Fujitsu Education Ambassador Programme, supported by Intel, Brocade, and Kyocera.

Brocade is a US technology company specialising in data and storage networking products and Kyocera is a Japanese electronics company.

The technical college has already opened a new £50,000 Education innovation Hub which has been kitted out with the latest computing technology to put digital courses at the forefront of the its curriculum.

The technical college is offering four new courses in total, including the Cyber Security Award, there will be an additional course in applied IT, the Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) certificate, the gold standard in IT training, and a BTEC Tech award in Digital Information Technology.