Dev Clever Holdings PLC LaunchPAD Careers Platform (2847Q)

TIDMDEV

RNS Number : 2847Q

Dev Clever Holdings PLC

19 February 2019

Dev Clever Holdings plc

("Dev Clever" or "the Company")

LaunchPAD: Launchyourcareer.com

Dev Clever, a leading developer of mobile and immersive experiences, is pleased to announce that its new careers guidance product LaunchPAD successfully went live on Monday, 18th February 2019.

LaunchPAD (Launchyourcareer.com) is a pioneering online platform that brings refreshing innovation to careers education. The platform offers a unique digital experience for young people, their parents and career advisors, welcoming users with an impressively straightforward and personalised means of exploring their career options. It is an intelligent platform that combines relevant, centralised careers content with intuitive navigation, to guide each user to the information they need to create a purposeful career pathway.

LaunchPAD is supported by key partnerships with ICould, The Careers Development Institute and leading educational institutions including Solihull College and University Centre and Wolverhampton College. The platform, which incorporates a personality assessment, is designed to match young people, their personality and interests to the careers that suit them the most. It also provides them with live government sourced Labour Market Information (LMI) highlighting the career's predicted employment growth by region, predicted salary levels as well as video content recorded by industry relevant professionals.

Once a career has been selected, LaunchPAD shows the academic, vocational and apprenticeship study options available as well as the specific courses and locations they can study in. The user will be able to apply to any of the 308 FE Colleges, 106 University's, 3,800 Training and Apprenticeship providers and view the 19,150 employers that qualify for the apprenticeship levy. Annual fees apply to each of these institutions and businesses and are offered as a self-service, Software as a Service (SaaS) model on a tiered subscription of up to GBP23k per annum determined by package option.

LaunchPAD is to be supported by an integrated virtual reality application VICTAR (Virtual, Interactive, Careers, Training & Apprenticeship Robot). Launching in March 2019 this short virtual reality experience is designed for secondary schools to use as part of their career guidance programme and as a method to engage their pupils in their career education. VICTAR, which will be available to secondary schools in the UK on an annual SaaS based licence, is designed specifically to support the government mandate of delivering careers information as set out in the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks.

 
1. A stable careers programme 
2. Learning from career and labour market information 
3. Addressing the needs of each pupil 
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers 
5. Encounters with employers and employees 
6. Experiences of workplaces 
7. Encounters with further and higher education 
8. Personal guidance 
 

LaunchPad and VICTAR have been in development for 3.5 years. Dev Clever has worked in collaboration with students, schools, educational institutions, training providers and employers to produce this step change product that addresses the critical national issue of bridging the UK Skills Gaps, which the government estimates will cost the UK Tax Payer GBP90bn per year by 2024.

A forerunner of LaunchPad and VICTAR, FastForward, has been in live testing for over 18 months with our partner Solihull College and University Centre, who received a National FE First gold award, incorporating the use of the interactive, virtual reality careers engine.

Chris Jeffries CEO said:

This is an exciting step change in the way careers information is delivered to school children as part of a more engaging and stable careers programme, providing young people with the opportunity to make an informed decision about their future. This should dramatically reduce the risk of making the wrong choice, which leads to mis-education and additional cost to the UK Tax Payer. At the same time, it provides educators, training providers and employers with a platform to advertise their offerings in a more targeted, efficient and cost-effective way.

Sean Howitt Marketing Manager Solihull College & University Centre said:

Dev Clever is at the forefront of the digital education movement, and we are proud to offer our students their full suite of digital products. Their communication and engagement solutions have positioned our institute as leaders in innovation, and the benefits to our students surpass our every expectation. The FastForward platform is proving invaluable for our young people and parents, and our community looks forward to Dev Clever's next innovative product. On behalf of Solihull College & University Centre, I would like to express our absolute support of Dev Clever's expansion of the FastForward platform: this project has the potential to deliver a considerable impact, particularly on a regional basis, and we eagerly await the results.

Emma Evans Marketing Manager Wolverhampton College said:

Live data in relation to careers and employment is typically difficult to source; LaunchPAD and the LMI information it presents to students allows young people to easily and quickly access current, relevant careers information. This is helping potential learners make more informed course and career choices. From our ongoing relationship with Dev Clever, we applaud their commitment to the education sector, and our students benefit hugely from their innovative ideas.

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February 19, 2019 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT)