You work in cloud Westdene? It's def good career path now, and the associate exams aren't to hard in azure, just working towards my data engineering in azure cert, we are heavily invested in azure and power platform, though done/do a fair in gcp
I concur with this, can learn scripting skills in support, powershell/bash/python and perhaps transition to dev if he isn't going to do a degree, opportunities will open up with a couple of years experience in something/anything in it.
A lot depends on the kind of IT, had a quick read on the NVQ 3, is it definitely dev that he wants to get into? (I'd probably learn python or vb.net rather than c# if he's self teaching)
If it's not dev, where he would be in the same pool of candidates with graduates who would have more coding...
Personally I don't think he should have been booked from tapping a free kick taken from a ball that was still moving, otherwise obviously def yellow. Would have booked him for taking a dive though after it, so off anyway:)