Demand for places at Scotland’s first dedicated software skills academy which opened in Edinburgh last month has been so high that a second branch will be opened in Glasgow next year with a decision on the opening of a third – most likely in Aberdeen or Inverness – expected to be made within months.

The CodeClan academy, which is modelled on similar academies in New York, London and Berlin, is a joint government and industry initiative which aims to fast-track students with the coding skills they need to create apps, websites and video games.

It was created to tackle a chronic global skills shortage in the sector which hit the headlines last week when Westminster MPs were told that the lack of qualified staff is now impacting the growth potential of Scotland’s digital industries.

The Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry into Scotland’s creative industries was told by Minecraft developer Chris van der Kuyl that North Sea oil could “look like a drop in the ocean” compared to the opportunities afforded by video games, if the country begins to take the industry seriously.

The CodeClan concept for the first time gives students in Scotland the option of doing a crash course in essential coding skills spread over just 16 weeks instead of attending lengthy university or further education courses.

CodeClan chief executive Harvey Wheaton, who returned to Scotland last month to take up the post after years in the video games industry, told the Sunday Herald that the academy had received over 60 applicants for its first intake of 15 students and a similarly high level off applicants have come forward for places for the next course which starts in November.

With almost a third of the current batch of students living in Glasgow it made sense to open an academy in Scotland’s largest city as soon as possible. “There is a massive skills shortage of graduates in this field as there are just not enough graduates,” Wheaton said. “We are now actively looking for a suitable site in Glasgow.”

“Scotland is experiencing unprecedented growth in the digital sector with lots of tech start-ups launching. The transformation of the Scottish tech scene over the last decade has been astounding but everybody is talking about the shortage of talent.

“With starting salaries for junior developers of £25,000 and excellent prospects it is an attractive option for many.”

“People might assume that coding is a highly technical field, but it is actually an incredibly creative vocation,” says Wheaton, who himself helped to create Harry Potter video games when he worked for Electronic Arts earlier in his career.

Wheaton, a PPE graduate from Oxford University, previously worked in Scotland in the nineties and noughties when he helped open JPMorgan Chase’s first office in Scotland in 2000, growing it from 20 to 300 people by 2003. It now employs 1,200 mostly software engineers. Wheaton has also helped develop software for ICI, Astra Zeneca and Cap Gemini.

“Back then the money in the Scottish tech scene was in financial services but it has really grown since then,” he said. “There is now almost a Silicon Valley feel here where people believe that anything is possible”.

Wheaton said that the academy is attracting students from a wide range of backgrounds and ages, including former offshore workers who lost their jobs in the oil and gas downturn who now want to retrain in IT.

Applications have also come in from armed forces personnel, a bus driver, a television installer, humanities graduates looking to acquire vocational qualifications, career switchers and coding hobbyists looking to turn their interest into a profession.

A new full-time intensive course at the academy will launch every 10 weeks, with the first cohort of students graduating in February 2016.

The Scottish Government has provided start-up finance but the new academy is, said Wheaton, expected to become self-financing “pretty quickly”.

Although scholarships are available, students have to find £4,500 in fees to pay for their courses while companies that sponsor the academy – which include RBS, Craneware and EdgeTesting – pay a further £5,000 for each student they take on once the course is finished.

Wheaton admits the cost is high, but points out that other digital academies charge fees twice as high as CodeClan’s as recruiting companies make no contribution. CodeClan was set up as a non-profit making social enterprise and all surpluses are reinvested in the academy and a student bursary scheme.

Last month Scottish Finance Secretary said he had been inundated with complaints from businesses about the availability of digital skills in Scotland. During a debate at Holyrood, Swinney said that improving digital skills are central to improving Scotland’s productivity and that the government is committed to making Scotland a “world class digital economy by 2020”.

It is expected that there could be as many as 11,000 job opportunities in Scotland a year in the thriving digital sector and this is set to increase by 2,000 every year as growth accelerates.