Skills Olympics Results are due today – Come on Britain

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23 Best of British Competitors are pitting their skill against the World in the 2007 WorldSkills Competition. This is the competition that is better known to the general public as the “Skills Olympics” . I am so excited, we have been given a few insights into the skills competitors, with a lot of press around Jade Kidd (who at 19 is the youngest competitor for Britain). Could Jade be the next Kelly Holmes for the vocational industry? I really, really hope so. At 19 she has already opened her own salon, so hopefully she can come home to Skegness with a Gold. If she does, will she be made a dame too?

The WorldSkills Competition in Japan are nearly over and the results will be out tomorrow. How will the Best of British fare against the 45 other countries? Two years ago at the WorldSkills in Finland, Britain won Gold in Car Body Repair, and Silver in Beauty Therapy and Stonemasonry. Come on Britain!

Skills, at last are on the agenda. Not just for us in the FE sector, but in Government and to everyday people. Let’s hope that the main stream press celebrate with us to honour those who stepped into the arena and represented their country.

Click here to view Teachers.TV footage of Jade before the competition (Beauty): http://www.teachers.tv/video/20556

Click here to view Teachers.TV footage of Graham Squire before the competition (Cooking)http://www.teachers.tv/video/20552

Click here to view Teachers.TV footage of Tim Lancaster and Keith Chapman, the UKs landscape gardening team for WorldSkills 2007 before the Competition: http://www.teachers.tv/video/20554

With a final word of something that always stir something deep inside of me before a big event. One of my favourite speeches I want to pass on for us all and especially to all of those that had the courage to compete and the courage to train and develop the team:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

“Citizenship in a Republic,”

Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

This is for every learner, this is for the British FE system. Come on Britain!

We will be able to feature more video footage from Teachers.TV as we are working in association with Teachers.Tv, especially with our new website FE Video.co.uk which will be launched in a couple of weeks time”¦ Watch this space for news on FE Video.

Gavin