The centre was set up following the January 2016 government report
Digital Skills for the UK Economy which highlighted the digital
skills gap in the UK economy, produced by the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which looked at research carried out by the
UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), which itself closed in 2017. Funding of £84m was announced in the
November 2017 United Kingdom budget to upskill around 8000 computer science teachers.
Simon Peyton Jones FRS, of
Microsoft Research, was appointed as the organisation's chairman in March 2019. In 2023, the
Department for Education renewed its funding for STEM Learning to deliver the next phase of its national support for computing education in England. ==Chair==