Wise, formerly TransferWise, has announced plans to help open a coding school in Estonia.

Estonia is home to Wise’s biggest office with over 1,000 employees.

The payments company said that it is collaborating on the two-year study programme, which is built on a cloud-based platform.

There are no teachers or traditional classes in Jõhvi school and the studies are free.

According to Wise, Estonia is home to more than 1,100 start-up and seven unicorns, but is currently short of thousands of IT specialists. Women make up only a fifth of jobs in the sector.

“Traditional tech education at universities is struggling to retain students as programs lack practical experience, and – as a result – there aren’t enough professionals to meet the market needs,” said Wise co-founder, Taavet Hinrikus. “In addition, we can’t ignore the increasing importance of general IT knowledge which will soon be part of everyone’s basic skillset, like learning and speaking English is today.”

Hinrikus added: “As a self-learner myself who dropped out of a traditional university CS degree, this innovative, practical school would have been ideal for my studies.”

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