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His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, Duke of York, attended the 2012 Engineering and Technology Careers Fair, opening the event that had been organised by ECS-Electronics and Computer Science for the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton.

The Duke of York then proceeded to take a full tour of the fair, speaking with a range of the companies who were present to discover how they worked with ECS and the university. Specifically he was interested to find out what skills they looked for in graduates applying for IT jobs after leaving university.

He was also particularly keen to try out a number of the technologies on display, which included a flight simulation display.

He commented “It is a great pleasure to join you at the University of Southampton, which is globally renowned and a university of which the United Kingdom is extremely proud.

“The fact that the Careers Fair has grown to the size it is today – and is actually bursting at the seams – is a sign of how important this University is and how keen businesses are to come here and attract students to work for them.”

An appeal had been sent out to members of the public to sponsor the new gallery that will be used to house the Colossus computer at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) on Bletchley Park.

The funds would be used to help to build the gallery in addition to allowing people to sponsor a valve on a virtual replica of the Colossus.

The computer itself was used to decipher encrypted messages during World War II and the exhibit is set to open next month.

TNMOC hopes to raise £150,000 to complete the gallery and Phil Hayes, the Colossus Rebuild Chief Engineer, commented ”Colossus plays a huge part in the history of electronics and computing and we aim to create a gallery to inspire future generations of computer scientists and engineers.”

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation has reported its first bit of positive news in a number of months in relation to the jobs market, claiming that the recruitment of permanent staff has risen for the first time in four months over the course of January.

Their survey of over 400 recruitment companies revealed that the market was being bolstered by an increase in the number of IT jobs available, in addition to other sectors performing quite well.

Despite this positive, the hiring of temp staff fell for the second month running, however this is to be expected as the Christmas period passes. However some recruitment agencies claim that new regulations that provide temporary worked with the same rights and benefits as permanent employees after 12 weeks had led to fewer companies looking to take on temps.

Also most economists expect unemployment, now at a 17-year high of 2.68m, to rise even further so it is not an entirely rosy outlook for the jobs market.

Kevin Green, the REC’s chief executive, claims the findings were “the first positive indicator for some time that employers are looking to hire staff despite the ongoing weakness of the economy.”

A leading academic in the computer science field has called on industry heads to work more closely with computing departments in universities in an effort to improve the employability of graduates before they head out into the world of work and start looking for IT jobs.

“Creating courses that meet the requirements of employers and focusing on the industry context of computing is crucial if students are to secure better jobs upon graduation,” states Professor Vesna Brujic-Okretic. He is currently the head of the School of Computing and Information Systems at London’s Kingston University.

He adds “Universities need to increase links between their staff expertise in research and industry with their education programmes.

“By getting students directly involved in the professional world, for example by making internships an integral part of a degree, they can provide a quantum leap in transforming graduates into desirable employees.”

His comments come as more and more people claim that IT education in the country is seriously lacking when compared to the actual demands of the industry. Some media reports even claim that some computer science courses have poor employment prospects for those enrolled because they don’t handle the problems that IT-centric companies would need an employee to handle.

He concludes “Concentrating on the technology alone is simply not enough. At Kingston University, we give our students first-hand experience in modern technologies, such as cloud computing and virtualisation, but we also ensure that they can apply these technical solutions to a wide variety of contexts once they enter the workplace.”

An MP has called fro the posthumous pardoning of the computing pioneer and expert code breaker Alan Turing. Turing, who invented the Turing Machine and was instrumental in the creation of the concepts of algorithms and computations. He was also instrumental in developing a machine that could crack the Enigma coding system used by the Germans during World War II.

However he was prosecuted for gross indecency in 1952 when it was revealed that he was a homosexual. At the time homosexuality was still illegal in the UK.

John Leech, the Liberal Democrat MP for Manchester Withington, has now lodged an appeal to have that conviction overturned, with an online petition also being set up to call for the conviction to be quashed.

The MP described Mr Turing as a national hero and he claims that Turing’s prosecution ”by the state for being gay is a scandal that shouldn’t be allowed to stand”.

An official apology has already been made to Turing for the way he was treated, with Gordon Brown offering the apology on behalf of the Government in 2009.

A recent report has claimed that Canadian organisations are going to be looking to create more IT jobs during the course of 2012, however a number of them are worried about developing the positions in the future in addition to how they will adjust to the various changes in the industry over time.

A recruitment company in Canada recently released the fifth iteration of an annual survey that they undertake. It looks at staffing requirements across a range of industries before estimating which ones will require the most new staff.

It also tends to place a heavy focus on the IT industry and the report has revealed that 43% of companies in Canada will be looking to bolster their IT divisions.

However many firms seem uncertain about how the the positions will evolve in the future, with Andy Brack, IT specialist with Hays Canada commenting “When we asked them what’s going to be the biggest challenge in retaining key staff, 67 per cent said it was career progression. Out of all the different sectors, the increase in IT was the second highest after mining. That leads you to believe that the IT sector is in a stronger position.”

A recent survey has revealed that almost a third of businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to find skilled graduate recruits to fill job roles. This is especially vexing considering the fact that there are more graduates than ever searching for jobs.

About 32% of businesses claimed that they fell short of their recruitment targets last year due to graduates simply not meeting their requirements. The figures demonstrate that the number of businesses that failed to hire graduates increased by a quarter throughout the course of last year.

Many of the employers claimed that the quality of applications was not always good enough, whilst some claimed that they simply lacked the time and funds to retrain students who didn’t already have key skills for the jobs on offer. One company even claimed that the rush for jobs led to some graduates making mistakes on their applications that took them out of contention.

The disclosure, in a report by the Association for Graduate Recruiters, will be devastating news for university leavers, who are often forced to accept low-skilled positions after leaving university. It is also believed that there will be even fewer graduate positions available next year.

A recent report has revealed that HMRC has missed a key deadline to create a team of cyber crime investigators who would have been recruited from various IT specialisations. The initiative had been brought through in an effort to counter the increasing number of web attacks on the authority’s systems.

Work on the project should have been completed in November, however work is still ongoing and people are still being recruited, necessitating a new deadline of the end of February.

The Government has repeatedly claimed that it is looking to buff up its IT security sector and current experts are being offered a number of incentives to stay instead of moving onto the private sector.

According to the Guardian “Outlining HMRC’s progress on other IT projects, the report discloses that “work is ongoing” on the creation of a data link between the registrars and HMRC to facilitate customer claims and counter fraud. The work is due to be completed in June 2012.”

Technology and science body The Royal Societyhas become the latest group to criticise the standard of ICT education in the UK, claiming that more specialist IT teachers are required in the area to ensure that students leave with a relevant background in the subject.

The organisation released a report, entitled Shut down or restart? The way forward for computing in schools, which took 18 months to complete and recommends a complete overhaul of the IT curriculum.

The Royal Society claims that the subject is too broadly interpreted, allowing any teacher to teach it. However this does not provide students with any specialised knowledge, making it difficult to pursue the subject past school.

Teacher training is also criticised, with the report stating that it isn’t sufficient to keep computing teachers up to date with developments. School infrastructure is also believed to inhibit the quality of teaching in the area.

“Action is needed not only on the curriculum itself, but also to recruit and train inspiring teachers to reinvigorate pupils’ enthusiasm for computing,” said Steve Furber, chair of the Royal Society.

Strong demand for IT personnel has allowed for the Scottish contractor’s market to remain fairly strong despite the fact that general recruitment in the country has begun to stagnate.

The market, alongside that for engineering, nursing and medical care, has ensured that there has only been a slight slip for contractors.

The December Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs shows that Aberdeen’s contract market is the most buoyant, with recruiters reporting higher contract billings and increased availability.

The Scottish IT contracting sector is also outperforming that of the UK as a whole, with a growth index rating of 62.6. Any rating above a 50 indicates growth, showing that the Scottish market is ding quite well.