Enlarge / Block G is one of the largest wartime structures at the site. (credit: Qufaro)
Bletchley Park—the home of codebreakers whose pioneering work helped Britain and its allies win the Second World—could be the site for a College of National Security, with plans for it to open in 2018.
The new sixth-form boarding school will, we’re told, be run by a private non-profit consortium of tech firms, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs, with rumoured input from GCHQ. It will enrol 500 teenagers (aged 16 to 19) who will be taught cybersecurity skills—which could, it’s hoped, go some way to addressing the shortfall in UK talent.
The outfit behind the college, which would apparently be free for its pupils to attend, says at least part of the syllabus would be set by infosec experts focusing mostly on cybersecurity (roughly 40 percent of the curriculum), with additional modules on maths, computer science, economics, and physics also taught over a three-year period of study. Applicants won’t be selected on the basis of specific academic qualifications, so much as through aptitude tests set by the college, or even on the basis of previously demonstrated skills, such as self-taught coding.