Tech and AI

Government opens AI bootcamp pilot in north-west England to counter youth unemployment

By Staff Writer  |  17 August 2026

Up to 70 people aged 16 to 21 have started three weeks of AI and workplace training under the new TechFirst AI Apprenticeship Pathway, with apprenticeships on offer afterwards from employers including JD Sports and Heinz. The pilot will shape an England-wide scheme due to roll out next summer.

The government's answer to a rising count of young people outside both work and education is to put AI in front of them. Recruits from Wigan, Blackburn, Blackpool and towns across the north-west began their training this week under a pilot announced by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 14 August.

The programme, delivered on the ground by IN4 Group, gives participants three weeks of training in building AI tools, understanding how businesses use the technology, and using it responsibly under human oversight and quality control. Alongside the AI content sits ordinary workplace preparation: office tools and systems, professional communication, teamwork, timekeeping, and working under pressure.

At the end of the scheme, businesses and public sector organisations across the region, including JD Sports, Heinz and local small firms, will have apprenticeships on offer. The government wants the majority of attenders to move into one.

Young people in every postcode deserve the opportunity to a great start to their adult life, and we are tackling the youth unemployment crisis head on.

Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Why the target is this age group

Official labour market figures published in May showed the number of 16 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training above one million for the first time since 2013, at 1.01 million in the three months to March.

Concern about AI's effect on employment has settled most heavily on school leavers and graduates, because the tasks usually given to newcomers are the tasks the tools perform most readily. The scheme turns that logic around: if entry-level work is being automated, entry-level workers who can direct the automation become more employable, not less. Kanishka Narayan, the minister for artificial intelligence, said: "This is a huge opportunity that will directly benefit young people across the country. This new scheme is about giving them the skills they need to thrive in the AI workplace, and build careers in some of our most exciting industries."

Mo Isap OBE, chief executive of IN4 Group, which runs the training, said: "Too many young people are leaving school without a clear route into the opportunities AI is creating. If we're serious about tackling youth unemployment, we have to rethink how young people move from education into work by creating pathways that connect talent with paid careers."

Support in principle, doubt on the timescale

Bouke Klein Teeselink, a lecturer in economics at King's College London who studies the effect of AI on work, called the bootcamp a good idea in principle. "What we need to do is make juniors more attractive to companies and one way to do that is make them more productive by teaching them how to do AI well," he said. He was sceptical, though, that three weeks is enough to make anyone AI-ready, since the tools change quickly and the learning does not stop.

The pilot builds on the £200 million TechFirst programme announced in summer 2025, which the department says has reached over 100,000 young people and supported 500 domestic PhD students in critical technology research. Results from the north-west cohort will inform an England-wide AI skills and early careers scheme due next summer.

Seventy places against a million-strong cohort is a pilot, not a policy. What it will test is the proposition underneath the whole debate: whether three weeks with the tools genuinely moves an unemployed eighteen-year-old to the front of an apprenticeship queue. By next summer the department will have its answer, and so will the rest of the country.