Barking & Dagenham College Students compete at WorldSkills LIVE UK

It is the UK’s largest skills, apprenticeships and careers event and was held on 15-17 November at the NEC Birmingham. Thousands of young people from around the country attended.

Dawid Demus, 19, and Sajid E-Fakhar Jahan, 34, competed with students from other colleges live on the Huawei stand.

Barking & Dagenham College houses a Huawei Authorized Information Network Academy and so the company asked the College to send along some its best IT students to compete.

On the day of the competition Sajid said: “I’m really excited to be at WorldSkills LIVE today. I had a chance to look around the amazing exhibition with my tutor– it was massive!

“Then I took part in the Huawei ICT Competition in the afternoon. It was quite nerve-wracking, as the Huawei stand was jam-packed with visitors.”

The duo will be taking part in the Global Huawei ICT Competition next year. The competition is expected to have 40,000 entrants from universities and colleges across the world.

Sajid and Dawid will be following in the footsteps of former Barking & Dagenham College student Viktor Linde who came second in the global competition.

This year 44 Barking & Dagenham College IT students are entering the global competition this year, an increase of 21 on last year.

Their tutor Henry Quarshie commented: “Sajid and Dawid have already passed their Huawei Networking Certification exams at the College and so I’m really hopeful that they will be heading to China for the global final next year!”

Pallavi Malhotra, Huawei ICT Academy Manager, Western Europe added: “It was great to have the Barking & Dagenham College students on our stand today demonstrating the skills they have learnt in the Huawei Academy at the College.”

Hundreds of schoolchildren visited the Huawei stand which also showcased their Honor smartphone with its AI camera.