Why Stories Matter in Opening Up Technology Careers

Jo Bishenden, Chief Learning Officer at training provider QA, makes a case for Social Mobility Day built on a simple premise: the stories people hear shape what they believe is possible for themselves, and most young people from lower-income backgrounds simply haven't heard enough stories about people like them succeeding in tech.

QA runs three linked programmes aimed at closing that gap: Teach the Nation, Tech4Futures, and EduQAte, delivered in partnership with organisations including Generation UK, Resurgo, Speakers for Schools, Coding Black Females, the Black Apprentice Network, Job Centre Plus, Ark Schools, and the London Digital Jobs & Skills Hub. That's a genuinely wide partner list, and it reflects how much coordination it takes to reach students who aren't already inside a school's existing careers pipeline.

The scale, per QA's FY24-25 figures, reached thousands of learners across the UK, with 33% of participants living in the three most deprived Index of Multiple Deprivation deciles and 52% identifying as ethnic minorities. Those two figures together are the point: the programmes are specifically reaching the students least likely to already have a route into tech through family or school networks, not simply adding volume to an existing pipeline.

Bishenden's illustrative case study is Natasha, who initially dismissed tech as "too advanced" for her before attending an AI skills workshop and coming out the other side with practical AI skills and, more importantly, the confidence that she belonged in the conversation at all. It's a small story, but it's the same mechanism Bishenden argues at scale: perception, not capability, is usually the first barrier, and it only shifts once someone sees a plausible version of themselves already doing the job.

The wider argument connects social mobility directly to the UK's skills shortage rather than treating them as separate issues: every capable person deterred by a perception gap is a hire the sector didn't get, at a time when the sector is short of people. Widening access, in this framing, isn't corporate social responsibility bolted onto a business, it's a direct answer to a live hiring problem.