Four colleges in the East of England have organised the first inter-college skills competition to raise awareness, inspire and give students the confidence to participate in the regional skills competition in April, run by UK Skills.
The colleges involved were North Hertfordshire College, Barnfield College, Cambridge Regional College and City College Norwich. There were 95 competitors in total, across 12 occupations in the areas of construction, motor vehicle, hair, beauty and IT.
North Hertfordshire College students did extremely well taking first place in the IT, bricklaying and plumbing categories.
NHC Bricklaying level 3 student Jade Brasier achieved first place in the bricklaying competition and NHC Plumbing level 2 student Alex Lombart won the plumbing competition. The idea of the competition is to give all the students more confidence in their abilities and in entering skills competitions.
NHC BTEC Extended Diploma IT students, James Lowis and Paul Moggridge who took part in the IT competition and did extremely well with Paul taking 6th place and James achieving a score of 95% taking first place and winning the competition.
All the students thoroughly enjoyed themselves, James commented,
“A really great day out and an opportunity to meet students from other colleges, would recommend it – go for it, I went for it and won!”
This year’s competition is a pilot involving the four colleges and in the future colleges from all over the East of England will be participating.
The next step for all the students who participated in the competition is to take part in the regional competitions in April, run by UK Skills, which will then lead on to the Nationals in June 2011. Eventually the aim is to take part in the international skills competition known as World Skills in October 2011.