Tom Muller, Director of Vocational Education and Training at the Department for Education, has announced that the first ‘Piscine’ will be held in November 2023 and early 2024, with the aim of building up a class by spring 2024.
The principle of the ‘Piscine’ is to immerse candidates in coding for 26 days, in order to determine who is a good fit for 42. This is the final stage in selecting the students who will benefit from training at Xavier Niel’s programming school. Present in 27 countries, on 46 campuses (including the one in Luxembourg), it is renowned for its accelerated, 100% free curriculum, which requires neither skills nor diplomas.
After years of discussion, its arrival in Luxembourg was announced in May 2022. It is one of four partners making up the Digital Learning Hub (DLH), which specialises in digital training.
A pool requires a minimum of 100 candidates. After that, 100 must be selected from the various ‘Piscines” for a promotion to open, with a maximum of 15.
It has already been possible to register at the pools for 10 months. A communication campaign is due to be launched soon to recruit more people. In the meantime, 822 people have created an account and 272 have successfully completed the online game. “About half of those who sign up play the game. Many start it but don’t finish it, either because they don’t have enough time or because they realise that it’s not for them,” explains Tom Muller. Of these 50%, “about half succeed in the game”.
The core curriculum will then last “12 to 18 months”, followed by a specialisation of variable length and an optional placement of four to six months. It is therefore “difficult to say”, even before the start of the first year when the second intake will be launched. At the end of the course, students obtain a certificate (European level 6 or 7).