Worldskills Barbados Juniors to occur biannually
The inaugural Worldskills Barbados Juniors (WSBJ) Competition will be a biannual contest and two skill categories will be added every time it is offered.
Education Officer with the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training (METVT), Henderson Wiltshire disclosed this as he addressed Monday’s WSBJ Closing Ceremony at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
He stated the addition of new categories will mean “when it comes around to 2021, we will have six skills rather than four”. On this occasion, students during the past week competed in four areas – cabinet making, hair-dressing, cooking and electrical instillation.
Wiltshire said the aim of the inaugural competition was mainly “to find out what skills students possess and what were the skill gaps”. He said this “would aid in preparing students in secondary school to Worldskills standards for the same competition”.
From this year’s contest, which was presented by the METVT in collaboration with the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Council (TVETC) Barbados, Wiltshire said it was evident students were highly skilled.
“One noticeable fact that came out through the competition was that students were in possession of high skills and that can only be linked basically to the implementation of the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) programme in schools. The advent of CVQs, which includes the training of teachers as well, has resulted in the improvement of grades at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level for students and improvement in the quality of products whether it be cooking or furniture making. We found that students who are taking part in the CVQ programme along with your CSEC programme demonstrated higher skills when it came to School-Based Assessments (SBAs),” it was explained.
Also sharing his own assessments, Chairman of the Worldskills Barbados Programme, Dario Walcott said over the past week he has “seen a passion and drive” from the participants “on par with what I have seen at Worldskills international competitions”. He additionally said he learnt that with “the right mentorship and guidance our young people can grow and improve at a faster rate if we expose them earlier”. Furthermore, from the response to the training sessions, he learnt that “our young people need more exposure to industry at this age”. (MG)