We've educated 4 ex-apprentices who were laid off by Bright Future last year. They've all now got jobs (or a recent job offer) at 4 different companies from an award-winning agency, to a fintech scale-up, to a company heavily involved with the Internet of Things.

Average age? 18.5
Average starting salary? £23,000
Average time to job offer from start of course? 4.5 months

We're proud of what we've done: just a few months after they were going through a really bad time, they're all reaping the rewards of their hard work.

These are student outcomes. Working in a coffee shop after 3 years at uni is not. Nor is earning a few quid an hour whilst on an apprenticeship.

Hundreds of young people get a derisory deal because the options presented to them are very often not in their best interest, especially when it comes to becoming a software developer, and because public bodies aren't backing alternative education that's more suited to both the students and the demands of the tech industry.

Manchester is far behind where it needs to be in this respect. For comparison, consider this: you'd think Silicon Valley would have things sorted right? Not so much that Xavier Niel, a French Billionaire, didn't think it needed a free code school.

This is what his COO had to say:

If we put up barriers to education with money or with backgrounds, that means there are innovative talents and individuals that are not able to have access to education. So the idea behind 42 is to create an opportunity where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas. Because in order to innovate, you need to have new people who think differently.

New people who think differently. Fancy that.