ShadowTech has been running since 2014 where the first ShadowTech Day gave girls in years 9-11 the chance to shadow a tech professional for a day.
Secondary school students were paired with a mentor who works in a local tech organisation. With their mentor, students were taken through a “day in the life of” experience that had them sitting in on meetings, witnessing the communication and interaction between peers, and seeing what a typical day is like in the IT Industry.
In 2021, the ShadowTech Teachers programme was introduced to widen the impact of ShadowTech by offering a similar programme to secondary school teachers.
ShadowTech Teachers provided teachers and career advisors the opportunity to explore the tech sector and discover the reality of working in tech.
Teachers were paired up with a mentor from the tech industry to gain insight into the jobs that exist within the tech sector. They also got to spend a hands-on half day shadowing their mentor in their work environment, arming them with real-life knowledge on how they can support students to pursue tech careers.
