gold dust - association of colleges dust report v1.pdf · 8 9 gold dust using skills competitions...

GOLD DUST USinG SkiLLS COmpeTiTiOnS TO BrinG exCeLLenCe TO ALL

A report on the WorldSkills London 2011 Legacy Projects

May 2015

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GOLD DUST Using Skills Competitions To Bring Excellence To All

WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions are a series of internationally-benchmarked vocational skills competitions that drive excellence in young people’s workplace skills. They bring benefits to young people, employers and training organisations especially in driving up standards in teaching and learning. The projects that formed the basis of this report aimed to build skills competition intelligence and resources following the UK’s hosting of WorldSkills in 2011. They contribute to the role competitions have in supporting the improvement in participation and quality in vocational skills.

This Find a Future report has been produced in partnership with the AoC and commissioned from the Mackinnon Partnership

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GOLD DUST Using Skills Competitions To Bring Excellence To AllGOLD DUST Using Skills Competitions To Bring Excellence To All

Key Information

inTrODUCTiOn

‘We’ve got gold dust here: why don’t people come and talk to us?’

Skills competitions have parallels in the world of competitive sports. Looking at August 2012, everyone watched Jessica Ennis win her gold medal on that glorious Saturday night. Then Mo Farah. Then Greg Rutherford. It was wonderful, and inspirational. Medals matter.

But London 2012 was about much more than medals. The concept of ‘legacy’ was central to London winning the Games because the British Olympic Association knew it had a terrific opportunity to use the Olympics to make more difference for everyone involved in sport, at whatever level.

There was a very similar thought when the WorldSkills London 2011 legacy projects were created early in 2012. It was recognised by the sector that skills competitions are gold dust and that the benefits reach far beyond the elite competitors who get to experience international competition. They also knew why one former competitor called WorldSkills competitions one of the world’s ‘best kept secrets’.

And the second half of the quotation at the top of this page matters too. The college lecturer who said it could see how skills competitions under the WorldSkills UK banner had brought very tangible benefits to his students, to his colleagues, to his college, and to the employers they worked with. But he also knew that too few providers and too few employers get involved. And he knows they’re missing out.

This is the story of those legacy projects, and of the wealth of knowledge and understanding now available to us through them. In part it’s a manifesto, too, aiming to show those who are sceptical that they should take a second look at skills competitions and at the many benefits they offer. The projects help place skills competitions as a vital tool for the UK’s skills landscape - to support young people, training organisations and employers as they strive to improve standards and shape skills for the future.

Participation is a journey, not an event

Like Olympic athletes such as Mo Farah, competitors in WorldSkills have trained, coached and prepared for skills competitions – and that’s where the lessons lie.

How do competitors progress?

WorldSkills UK National Skills Competitions Heats are held in colleges, work places and trade events across the UK from April to July each year. The highest scoring competitors and teams are invited to take part in the finals of the WorldSkills UK National Skills Competitions which take place every year at The Skills Show, the nation’s largest skills and careers event and helps to shape the future of a new generation. The national finalists will compete for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals, each of them hoping to be the UK Champion in their chosen skill.

Attribute &Skills

Assessment

Jan 2016

18 month training & development programme

July 2017 Oct 2017

2015

Nov 2014 – Mar 2015 Apr – Jul 2015 Nov 2015

TeamSelection

Local activities

Enter online by 20 March

2015 Heats/passive stages

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Developing and Understanding Vocational Excellence (‘DuVE’)

Project Summary

Developing and Understanding Vocational Excellence (DuVE) is a suite of research projects which aim to improve mainstream skills development by deepening our understanding of how learning happens in skills competitions. Some projects are continuing to December 2015.

The research was designed and managed by the multi-disciplinary research centre SKOPE (Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance) at Oxford University, with six projects:

Project 1: Modelling the Characteristics of Vocational Excellence

• WhatcanwelearnaboutvocationalexcellencefromtheabilitiesandcharacteristicsofWorldSkillsUK Skills Competitions medal winners?

Project 2: Learning Environments to Develop Vocational Excellence

• WhatcanwelearnaboutdevelopingvocationalexcellencefromtheworkingenvironmentinwhichWorldSkills UK competitors work?

Project 3: Benefits of Developing Vocational Excellence

• HowdoestheWorldSkillscompetitionbenefitcompetitors,andtheorganisationswithwhichtheyare associated?

Project 4: Further Education college participation in WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions1

• Whydoescollegeparticipationvary?Whatarethecostsandbenefitsofparticipation?

Project 5: WorldSkills Competitors and Entrepreneurship

• Whydosomanycontestantsgoontosetuptheirownbusiness?

Project 6: Training Managers: benefits and barriers to WorldSkills participation

• WhatarethemainbenefitstoTrainingManagersoftheUK’sparticipationinWorldSkills?Howdothey prepare their competitors?

Completed projects are published on the project’s website: vocationalexcellence.education.ox.ac.uk

The DuVE suite of projects are a significant contribution by one of the UK’s leading research centres to a growing body of WorldSkills research, and to our understanding of the value of skills competitions. The studies build on previous work done by SKOPE itself and by others, covering a broad range of questions, indicated above. The work was conducted in two phases. Results from the first phase are available on the project’s dedicated website, and the reports from the second phase will be available later this year.

Research matters, and it matters particularly to legacy. A researcher’s caution and persistent probing do not always sit easily with the celebration and excitement on which competitions thrive, but if we are to get the full benefit from skills competitions run under the WorldSkills banner we need both. There will always be some who join in for the excitement alone, but the rest of us want to see evidence that the results are worth the effort. These studies go a long way to providing that evidence, and we draw heavily on them in the next section of the report, especially project 3 on the benefits of developing vocational excellence.

1. inTrODUCinG The prOjeCTS

‘Don’t dream of winning. Train for it’

Mo Farah

There are five legacy projects. They vary in character and purpose, from rigorous research to very practical developmental projects, from ‘proof of concept’ development to long-term relationship building with overseas partners. This section introduces the projects, with a summary in the boxes and a brief commentary on each. The implications are drawn out in more detail in the next section.

The context is the five ‘Legacy Goals’ set for this work:

The Legacy Goals

1. To raise the profile of vocational skills.

2. To recognise skills as critical to wider economic development.

3. To increase levels of employer investment and commitment.

4. For more young people to consider and enter vocational skills and careers.

5. To generate standards of excellence in the teaching of vocational skills to support future economic development and growth.

Those five goals also clearly link the legacy projects to many other activities and programmes in the skills and education field: in some cases the links have already been made, but in others there’s work still to be done. The five goals remain relevant today.

1 This project is explicitly about further education colleges: it does not include independent training providers.

http://vocationalexcellence.education.ox.ac.uk

http://vocationalexcellence.education.ox.ac.uk/publications/reports/

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The case studies in the publication ‘Global Standards’ are a treasure trove of inspiring stories: working within all the constraints everyone understands, they show what can be done to improve the standards of competitors. Two examples:

• NewCollegeLanarkshirehasusedtheWorldSkillsmodeltoproduceanumberofintegratedassignments in engineering design based on real industrial problems. The HMI inspection report in 2012 commended the project as ‘excellent practice’ commenting that the project ‘reflects industry practices and enhances the skills and employability of students’. Successful participation in WorldSkills has also enhanced the college’s reputation and resulted in a growth in enrolments in this subject from 80 to 180 between 2008 and 2013, with a proportionate growth in staff and investment in facilities.

• Guidancefor‘Trailblazers’thatissteeringthedevelopmentofnew-styleapprenticeshipsinEnglandencourages them to look internationally for best practice. The EAL awarding body, worked with sheet metal fabricators KMF (which had a member in Team UK for WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions), Amada (a global business providing machine tools and a WorldSkills sponsor) and City of Wolverhampton College, to develop an additional 10-credit unit at Level 3 based on the WorldSkills specification. The unit, and another at Level 2, are now available.

I would love the Test Project from WorldSkills to be at the end of the four year apprenticeship

Gareth Higgins, Managing Director, KMF

So what?

The standards are the ‘Crown Jewels’ of WorldSkills. This project has helped WorldSkills to make the standards truly accessible to all for the first time, (https://www.worldskills.org/what/education-and-training/wsss/) and, together with the publication Global Standards, shows practitioners and policy-makers how they can use them to shift the focus from competence to excellence.

Supporting ‘Performance Excellence’ with qualifications

Project Summary

Away from the spotlight, more than 30 members of Team UK at WorldSkills London 2011 won further recognition for what they had achieved when they were awarded ‘Performance Excellence’ qualifications designed especially for the occasion. The qualifications recognised that squad members had gone well beyond minimum standards, and followed systematic approaches in order to do so.

When the competition was over, UK Skills (the organisation then responsible for managing skills competitions) set up a project to explore whether that same approach could work for others. Through the Performance Excellence Qualifications project a team from North Warwickshire and Hinckley College worked with two exam boards and a university to test a range of new qualifications, initially at Levels 2, 3 and 4, and later with a Level 5 and foundation levels as well. They ran a dozen pilots to test whether an approach designed for Team UK at WorldSkills would also work for participants in other skills competitions, and for people aiming for excellence at work (including apprenticeships).

The research is not conclusive and, as is often the case, advancing knowledge raises new questions. If ‘employers’ are positive, is that true of all employers? Is there a different response, perhaps, from employers working directly with retail customers (such as hair and beauty, floristry), where ‘excellence’ becomes an immediately sellable benefit, rather than those in other sectors? And so on. We offer some suggestions below for future research.

So what?

WorldSkills competitions, which include WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions, are great fun, and terrifically motivating for all concerned – but they’re also at the apex of a great deal of serious work behind the scenes to understand vocational ‘excellence’ better, especially teaching and learning. The DuVE model of rigorous research written to be accessible to practitioners is a major contribution to that growing understanding.

International Standards Transfer Project

Project Summary

Until recently a member country may not have found it easy to extract immediate value from the documentation and activities of the WorldSkills Competition. This project addressed one part of that gap.

Other countries, notably Finland and Switzerland, have managed to achieve much greater alignment between their national vocational standards and world standards. The purpose of the project, which was managed by North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, was therefore to transfer those international standards to the UK. The team had privileged access to WorldSkills processes and experts, and also worked with the WorldSkills team to update and refine those standards.

The project took on a new flavour in 2013 when it was asked to support the work being done in England to implement the Richard Review on the future of apprenticeships, which had promotion of excellence as its cornerstone – stretching learners rather than asking them to come up to scratch.

This is a significant policy-related project which has contributed to thinking in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills as it turns the Richard Review recommendations into new rules for more demanding apprenticeships.

As a result of the project:

• Buildingontheprojectcontribution,all50WorldSkillscompetitionshaveadoptedglobalstandardsfollowing thorough worldwide consultation;

• ThereportGlobalStandards:bridgingtheskillsgapwaslaunchedattheAssociationofCollegesAnnual Conference in November 2014, using detailed case studies to show how WorldSkills standards, and the thinking which underpins them, can be used by business-led partnerships to create new approaches to teaching and learning which support excellence, not conformity.

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International Exchange Development Project

Project Summary

This project is being led by the Association of Colleges, and was designed to build relationships around skills competitions with Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa. The aim was three-way benefit: the UK would learn from others, they would learn from the UK, and everyone would benefit from new joint projects.

Political tensions have slowed down progress with the Russian project for the moment, but the other three are progressing well.

The partnership with Brazil – the host for WorldSkills 2015 in São Paulo in 2015 – is based on mutual benefit and a college to college, agency to agency, sustainable partnership founded on that shared experience as former and current hosts.

The Association of Colleges has been working for some time to develop partnerships between British and Brazilian colleges and the project has enabled it to use that knowledge to deepen those relationships. A UK delegation visited during WorldSkills São Paulo ‘Preparation Week’ in February 2015, sharing experience with Brazilian colleagues, particularly on competition preparation. The group also visited the competition site and undertook a number of other visits, notably to colleges, and to a hotel school where competitors engage in pressure testing (i.e. timed challenges) for skills competitions.

The British Government has a strategic ambition to deepen business links with China, and this project has successfully established a long-term partnership around WorldSkills which offers excellent political, economic and cultural benefits.

China is joining WorldSkills in order to connect with the global movement of skills and markets. Song Jian, UK Technical Delegate for China, 2011

The partnership has been built on the following:

• Professionaldevelopmentpresentationsandmasterclassesin11cities,workingwithover500teachers and managers and over 100,000 students.

• InvolvementoftheWorldSkillsUKAlumniasskillsambassadorsandmasterpractitioners.

• JointtrainingandassessmentactivitiesforSquadandTeamChinaandUK.

• CreationofformalpartnershipswitheightleadingChinesecollegesoftheMinistryofHumanResources and Social Security (MoHRSS).

• CreationofanexchangeprogrammeforWorldSkillsexperts.

• Creationofastandard-settingprojectforfouroccupationalareas:graphicdesign,webdesign,refrigeration and air conditioning, and motor vehicle engineering.

• Creationoftwo30-hourteacherdevelopmentprogrammestobeusedforhighlevelskills.

• DevelopmentofWorldSkills-relatedtrainingpackagesonassessmentandstandards.

• PolicydialoguewiththeMoHRSSandtheMinistryofEducation.

• TrainingandadviceforTeamChina.

‘Achieving Excellence in a Vocational Skill’ qualifications created

Qualification Exam Board Credits Ofqual ref

Level 2 Award NCFE 6 600/8230/6

Pearson BTEC 6 600/7867/4





Level 2 Certificate NCFE 15 600/8231/8



The Awards are single Unit qualifications. The Level 3 and 4 certificates offer a choice of Units for those ‘striving for excellence in a skills competition’, or ‘in a work-related setting’.

Broadening the range at both ends, the team later also worked with the University of Derby to create a Level 5 qualification, and with Derwen College and Open College Network West Midlands Region to create Awards at Level 1 and Entry Level 3.

Piloting involved more than 130 learners, working in 11 occupational areas through 8 colleges and two other organisations, plus 20 members of the Team UK for EuroSkills Leipzig 2013.

This was a ‘proof of concept’ project, and it worked. It tested the concept that all the different stages required for an effective focus on excellence in vocational performance can be captured in a qualification available for all, and useful to all.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Employers liked the qualifications. Learners liked the boost they gave to their CVs, liked having a clear framework, and said that using it motivated them, whether they were preparing for a skills competition or for a career.

Perhaps most significant of all, the qualification helped learners to be clear what ‘excellence’ means in their chosen skill.

The smaller, tightly-defined, Awards proved to be much more popular: there was limited take-up for the rather larger Certificates and after a while the team stopped promoting them.

An initiative in Wales, piloting a Higher Apprenticeship for professional chefs was able to adapt one of the Awards, creating a new unit called ‘Developing Personal Performance Excellence in a Professional Kitchen’, which it made mandatory2. The opportunity to build these units into other qualifications may ultimately be at least as valuable as running them as free-standing qualifications.

So what?

The Performance Excellence Qualifications project is central to the process of bottling what works in elite competition so it can be used by everyone else.

2 The professional chef project was supported by another WorldSkills Legacy Project – the International Standards Transfer Project – written up in detail in the project report, Global Standards, pp 17-19.

https://www.aoc.co.uk/about-colleges/world-skills-uk-the-skills-show/worldskills-legacy-projects#overlay-context=about-colleges/world-ski

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In South Africa the UK has been supporting and nurturing a newly-joined member of the WorldSkills family.

The project builds on the work completed by Kendal College with the College of Cape Town, using skills competition activity to drive up standards in teaching and learning. The South African college has also adopted the concept of ‘Have a Go’ areas from the UK’s ‘The Skills Show’, and created its own Vocational Masterclass Programme.

A British delegation visited Johannesburg and Cape Town earlier in 2015, meeting Government officials, national sector skills leaders, and public and private training organisations. The group also participated in the inaugural WorldSkills South Africa National Skills Show in Cape Town, which is based on the UK’s Skills Show model. As a result the Principal of the College of Cape Town is working with fellow Principals to encourage others to engage in skills competitions in South Africa.

The project has worked closely with the British Council, which has been developing a Leadership Exchange Programme for college senior leadership teams in the UK and South Africa.

So what?

Is this the UK collaborating with our rivals – or joining them in a shared endeavour to drive real value for all from the learning which comes through competition? WorldSkills is all about collaboration. While for one week every two years the world’s young talent vies for recognition, for the remaining 103 weeks over 70 countries learn from each other in a community of excellence. Learning is at the heart of WorldSkills and at the heart of skills competitions.

Vocational Masterclasses Project

Project Summary

The Vocational Masterclass Programme gives practitioners the chance to develop new skills and techniques through participating in highly effective, practice-based, national developmental events. Though the original legacy programme ended in 2013 its work continues through the National Skills Competition CPD Programme, funded by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) through to the end of July 2015, with prospects for continuation beyond that.

Expert advisers support skills competition activities (i.e. teachers do what competitors do, tackling a task aligned with WorldSkills standards, within a set, and tight, timescale), providing guidance, coaching and mentoring for organisations to build capacity and capability – all with an eye to building quality and enhancing standards for learners.

Teachers, trainers and leaders have worked together to devise new models of good practice and strategies for boosting organisational performance.

Project outputs include:• theresource-packedpublication,‘WinningWaysofLearning’• aYouTubechannel• expertpractitionernetworks

The resources are available here: https://worldskillsuk.org/organising-a-masterclass

The original programme tailored approaches to the different circumstances of each region, typically starting with presentations to college leaders. Follow-up sessions with teaching staff and others showed how the methodology of competitions could be applied to everyday teaching and learning. They also challenged the widely-held misconception that skills competitions are only for WorldSkills level learners.

More than 1,000 learners, teachers and managers participated in the original legacy programme, and feedback was very positive. The programme funded by the Education and Training Foundation in 2014 embedded the Masterclass concept, supporting a further 1,500 people, and the extension in 2015 is expected to add another 500-600. Plans are being developed to continue the programme from September 2015.

Everyone in the sector talks about ‘teaching and learning’, and this project has given more emphasis to coaching, within a broader Continuing Professional Development programme which is very practical and hands-on, and which has created a suite of immediately usable tools.

The Vocational Masterclass Programme has energised teachers: it’s central to the task of deepening their ‘dual professionalism’, both teaching and vocational skills:

I took back to my college quite a lot from the day; watching treatments carried out by three people who have trained at different colleges was quite an eye opener. I picked tips up from all three of them, and I have been in the industry for 40 years. It was a masterclass in every sense of the word …

That alignment with their organisation’s wider ambitions is also clearly evident in Boston College’s experience. Vice Principal Fiona Grady’s assessment will strike a chord with many senior managers:

It’s mainly about increasing employability: it’s not about winning competitions.

At its simplest, taking part in competitions marks a student out, giving them a competitive edge when they apply for a job. Competitions give students ‘a reason to try that little bit harder’. And taking part increases students’ confidence, which is hugely valuable in employability terms.

Competition is very far from being a standalone activity for the few: taking part in competition is part of Boston College’s commitment to student employability, and to raising aspiration, and to enterprise. Indeed, the college has set an ambition that every programme area should take part in competitions over the next two years. This goes beyond the vocational areas: students studying academic subjects have joined debating competitions with local schools, and students with learning difficulties and disabilities have their own competitions in the style of ‘The Great British Bake Off’.

The extension programme which the Association of Colleges continues to run with Education Training Foundation support has built some of those links into the programme, for example with a ‘using competition to stimulate employer engagement’ option, and a ‘Train the Experts’ programme, which is mapped to the Ofsted Common Inspection Framework.3

So what?

It is in the classroom that teachers and trainers pull together all the many tools and initiatives that come their way, extracting what’s of real value and discarding the rest: the Vocational Masterclass Programme not only shows them how, it shows them how they can use competition to unlock the potential of these other ambitions for their students.

➢

3 See the links at the end of the document

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2. hOw COULD yOU USe ThiS wOrk?

‘Children’s education is the poorer if they are deprived of the chance to compete’

Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools in England and Head of Ofsted

If you are a leader or a trainer in education or training …

The Commission … recognises the potential of skills competitions, not only to raise the ambition and skill level of learners and offer opportunities for professional updating for vocational teachers and trainers, but also to contribute to the process of raising standards and improving the quality and efficiency of work overall.

Commission on Adult Vocational Training and Learning

Whether you’re a Principal or a trainer, Chief Executive of a training provider or a work placement coordinator, you want to see learners engaged, excited and motivated. These attributes come in spades with skills competitions, and participation changes people’s lives. This is core business, not an exotic distraction.

Competitors in skills competitions no more just turn up on the day and give it their best shot than do their cousins in sports competitions. There are learning opportunities at every step: planning and preparation, time management, working to a deadline, articulating what you’re doing to others, identifying what ‘excellent’ looks like and how to get there, reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, building the resilience to keep going despite setbacks … and much more. Students love it.

I really enjoyed that. The thing I liked was being put under pressure – I didn’t think I would like that, but I did. I liked the fact that it was hard and we really had to work to get everything done.

Learner at Cambridge Regional College, Vocational Masterclass project

It’s infectious. It went across the department that everybody wanted success.

College tutor

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Maybe 200 employers get actively involved in The Skills Show, supporting competitors at the WorldSkills UK Skills Completions finals and promoting careers in their sector – an ideal opportunity to work with them on a shared agenda.

The legacy projects bring you tried-and-tested tools and techniques to help to make the most of these opportunities, for both students and organisations:

Provider Benefits Summarised

• Improvementstoperformance,forbothindividualsandtheorganisation.

• Medalsuccessbringsverypositivepublicity,andwiderreputationalbenefits.

• Competitionsexciteandmotivatestudents.

• Competitionsexciteandmotivatestaff.

‘The best thing I ever did with my career’, said one Training Manager.

• Competitionsinterestandattractemployers.

• TheVocationalMasterclassProgramme(whichisstillgoing)trainsteamsforallthis,andplugstheminto a community of practice so they keep learning.

• ThePerformanceExcellencequalificationsgivesatried-and-testedstructureforfocusingstudent’swork to do more than simply pass.

If you are an employer …

Some employers are clearly motivated by a pride in seeing one of their employees doing well and aiming high. SKOPE quotes one saying, in very human terms: ‘I saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity for him, and I was there to encourage him all the way’. But to get large-scale buy-in from employers we need to be able to go beyond altruism and show them straightforward business benefits.

So it’s more powerful to hear a different employer say that there was ‘a good commercial reason to promote this’, because the company name was ‘associated with the new techniques and new floristry’. That better reputation led to ‘better clientele’ and ‘bigger turnover’.

Another was able to use the enhanced skills his employee learnt preparing for WorldSkills 2011 to pitch for ‘‘bigger and more interesting jobs … [we] … wouldn’t normally have been able to quote for without the knowledge that he’s learnt, the skills that he’s learnt’. There is obvious scope here for productivity gains.

The most striking benefit to preparation for elite competition is the personal growth that the competitors enjoy, just the kind of accelerated maturity we find in elite athletes:

People who meet the past competitors and chat to them, they’re very impressed with them … They’re very confident young people.

These are people you’d want in your team – and just the sort of development programme you’d want for them. No wonder so many win a promotion after their Competition.

Competitors build their technical skills too, their ability to reflect on their work, their speeds (because they are tested in timed trials), their time management, and their understanding – all hugely valuable skills in any employee.

Derwen College has reviewed in some detail its experience of using skills competitions, and what they learnt has much wider relevance:

Detailed competition briefs help Derwen College’s students to learn

The detailed internal review of the Vocational Masterclass Programme quotes the college’s quality manager:

Everything we do here is about knowing the students’ levels then setting clear targets and breaking down the tasks into simple and clear steps - very small steps sometimes. It sounds very simple but it isn’t. That’s exactly what writing those competition briefs is about so that is where quality improvement will impact.

Teachers learnt too:

I didn’t realise how much support we give – maybe we need to step back and let them make mistakes in a safe environment.

I wasn’t keen on testing, nor competition, but after today, I have had second thoughts.

Ofsted has recognised the wider value of competition on the sports field. In his foreword to Ofsted’s report on the sporting legacy from London 2012, Going the extra mile: competitiveness in school sport, Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw says this:

The real value of competitive sport is the positive effect it has on education. Schools that win on the field win in the exam hall.

There are business benefits, too. SKOPE’s research puts enhanced reputation at the top: associating your organisation’s name with excellence and the reflected glory from terrific PR opportunities.

I think a year ago, they [the competitor’s college] had a bit of trouble with numbers, trying to get people on the course. From my competition, and being in all the papers and that, they’ve now had an influx of people.

WorldSkills Team UK Competitor, 2011

The quotation points to a simple ‘bottom line’ benefit in terms of better recruitment. There was no systematic attempt through the legacy projects to assess the wider benefits to providers in enhancing ‘quality’ across the board – from professional upskilling to improved inspection results - but there can be no doubt that the benefits are there.

Another quotation, for example, shows the scope for involving employers in your work:

It was clear that inviting employers to the [Masterclass] event had huge benefits for us as an organisation. Wherever employers chose to look, learners were engaged, motivated and on task. The centre was portrayed in a very good light. Some employers have requested that we investigate routes into competition for their apprentices. We now plan to use competition days for future employer engagement.

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Employer Benefits Summarised

Employers identified seven benefits from one of their employees being a WorldSkills competitor:

• Employersenjoyedgoodpublicityandhigherprestige.

• Employeeperformancewasenhanced.

• Employersgainedsatisfactionfrombeingcommittedtoskillsdevelopment.

• Companiesreapedteamwork-relatedbenefits.

• Newtechniques/productsareintroduced.

• Companiesattractedmorebusinessclients.

• InvolvementintheWorldSkillscompetitionimprovedrecruitment.

source: SKOPE, Benefits of Developing Vocational Excellence through skills competitions

If you work in the skills competition sector …

Youalreadyknowthatthere’sgolddusthere.Sothetaskisn’tconvincingyourselvesbutconvincingothers. The legacy projects provide a wealth of examples of how skills competitions benefit not just the competitors, but other learners, employers, colleges and training providers, and the wider economy. But the Vocational Masterclass Project and WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions data have shown clearly that despite thorough preparation to attract interest in every region and from every provider, participation in skills competitions remains a minority activity.

Yourchallengeistohelpleadersincollegesandtrainingprovidersseethatthisisnot‘anotherask’(as one Principal put it), but a set of tried-and-tested ways of helping them with the core business – teaching, learning and motivating students, building reputation, attracting more students, attracting more employers and striving for excellence.

The Legacy Goals explained earlier align superbly with other priorities for the skills sector:

• Raisingperformance.

• TheCAVTL4 agenda of better teaching and learning, and better engagement with employers so there’s a clear line of sight to work.

• WorkwithLocalEnterprisePartnershipsandtheirequivalentsintherestoftheUKsothattrainingprovision is better aligned with economic needs (the so-called ‘localism agenda’).

• Apprenticeshipreform,andthenewfocusonexcellenceratherthancompetence.

• Worktosupportprofessionaldevelopmentandgrowthforstaff.

• WorkfromtheGazelleCollegesandotherstoharnessenterprisetolearning.

• Thequesttoimprovecareersinformationandtoprovideexperientialactivities.

• Worktoenhancetheevidencebasefromresearchsoweknowwhatworks.

… and much else besides, like the growing interest in developing ‘character’ as an educational goal, the countless examples from skills competitions of how competitors grow as people through participation and work to enhance the evidence base from research so we know what works.

So make the links.

My technical skills have obviously come on massively. Jumped me like three, four years above the people I went to college with.

Chocolate work … maybe it’s bloomed, or the fat’s come to the surface, or it’s stuck in the mould and things, and I suppose through the training I’ve learned, why can this happen, what are the reasons, what can you do to change it?

And any employer who’s ever complained about the woeful communication skills of young people today should read this anecdote:

Communication skills: a parent’s story

He was doing a competition in Manchester, and he got introduced to Prince Charles, and the first time he met him he just went, ‘Hello.’ And that was it. That was the only thing he said to him. And shook his hand, and that was it. And then got his head back down and started doing his work again, on the stone.

And I said, ‘I can’t believe it, that’s what you said to him.’ He said, ‘Well what was I supposed to say?’ AndIsaid,‘Wellyoudidn’tsayanything,youjustsaid,‘Hello.’Andhewent,‘Yes.’

And he got the chance to actually meet him again, about 15 months later, something like that, and just never shut up. He was completely the opposite, he was just chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, explaining to Prince Charles what he was doing, why he was doing it, how he was doing it.

Exactly how you use better communication skills depends on your business, but whether it’s talking to customers or to colleagues, coaching someone more junior, or representing your company at a careers event, every business wants its technical experts to be able to communicate well.

Then there are the WorldSkills standards themselves, a terrific tool available to you to benchmark what you do against the best. One company’s boss, one of whose employees was a competitor in Team UK at WorldSkills London 2011, told the researchers at SKOPE: ‘his standard is now our standard as a company’. WorldSkills International has now published all the standards on its website so they’re available to any company that wants to aim high.

It’s worth noting, too, that the standards are far from static. Just as in sport – and in business – standards keep rising, and WorldSkills keeps re-calibrating them.

A Team UK competitor who won a Medallion of Excellence in 2007 said the standards had moved quickly since he competed:

I don’t think I could get through any more because the standard of ours has improved so much. … it’s constantly getting harder and harder.

For businesses involved in designing new-style apprenticeships through the Trailblazer initiative, the Performance Excellence qualifications give you ready-made tools to show learners how to work towards excellence. For example, the Performance Excellence was built into an apprenticeships in Wales ahead of the Trailblazer work.

4 Commission for Adult Vocational Training and Learning

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If you are a researcher (or you fund research) …

SKOPE’s research adds considerably to our knowledge and understanding, and the remaining reports will no doubt do the same. The findings from the research can be used to underpin and better understand current practice. But this is a complex field, and advancing knowledge opens the way for more sophisticated questions which will add a much finer grain to our understanding.

We recommend Find a Future to convene a research group to define and oversee a continuing programme of research, and to make sure that messages are effectively disseminated from it. To help start the discussion, we suggest six questions that different parts of the skills community might want answered next.

Future Research and Development Questions

• What(lasting)impactdoesparticipationinskillscompetitions,atanylevel,haveonteachingandlearning? How does competition practice change and improve curriculum delivery and learning performance? Does the impact last?

• Dothebenefitsofparticipationinskillscompetitionsworkdifferentlyfordifferentsectors?Thedynamics of a craft business, for example, are very different from those of accountancy or advanced engineering, and business benefits may work differently in a customer-facing businesses, rather than one which sells business-to-business.

• Isitpossibletoquantifywhether,andifsohowmuch,recruitmentincreasesforcollegeprogrammesactively participating in skills competitions?

• RecognisingthatFindaFutureisalsoresponsibleforTheSkillsShow,whatevidenceistherethatskills competitions change perceptions of different industries and occupations? We have plenty of anecdotal evidence but can we go further?

• Thoseinvolvedtalkaboutthereputationalbenefittocompanieswhoseemployeestakepartinskillscompetitions, but what evidence is there? Can we quantify the benefit?

If you work in Government or in skills policy …

Governments of all persuasions want the UK’s economy to thrive, so the search is on for tools, techniques and programmes which get to the heart of building excellence. WorldSkills and its related family of skills competitions offer you a particularly full tool-bag.

The most immediate and politically high-profile opportunities lie with apprenticeships, changing fast in England and a high priority throughout the UK. For many years we have worked to skills standards which defined competence, is a good starting point but providing no guide to ‘what excellence looks like’. WorldSkills standards do say what excellence looks like, and offer you a powerful tool to point to how ambitions can be set differently. WorldSkills International has perhaps been rather slow in making the standards widely available, but publishing them on the refreshed website this spring is a great opportunity to use them to reinforce your messages about quality and excellence. Take it, and make the links.

‘Make the links’ is a recurring theme of this report because skills competitions are not just another initiative seeking support. They are of a different order because they are unifying, they help you bring other initiatives together and make them coherent. That is true both at policy level and for hard-pressed practitioners who are often at their wit’s end to disentangle the myriad of initiatives and work out which will help their students most.

As an example, the Network for Black Professionals has looked into what limits engagement in skills competitions by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students, who have historically been under-represented. With support from the Skills Funding Agency and the Association of Colleges, NBP produced a slide deck5 outlining a number of practical steps which colleges and training providers can take to recruit more tutors and to increase participation.

Differentiated messages like this often have more impact, especially when promoted from within a community of interest rather than to one, but the trick is to find economical ways to do that. As part of its forward thinking Find a Future, the educational organisation that brings together WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions, The Skills Show and The Skills Show Experience,might think about creating a core resource – perhaps a slide deck like NBPs’, perhaps something different – which can be tailored for different audiences.

More immediately, there’s an opportunity to ensure that existing WorldSkills UK Skills Competition resources are easy to find on the Find a Future website.

We say more in the final section on how the impetus behind WorldSkills legacy might be carried forward, but funding, of course, comes into it. Now that the value is clear, it’s worth a serious look at how to invest in this work for the long term.

If you are an international partner …

We in the UK are keen to work with you to build on our experience of ‘legacy’. We, too, enjoy seeing our competitors win medals, but we know that the concept of legacy, which we explore in this report, shows how much more there is to elite competition than medals – and how much more there is to skills competitions than elite competition.

We think that gets right to the heart of what WorldSkills is about, and we’re keen to work with others who think the same way. WorldSkills is about learning, and learning relies on sharing, so work with us.

With that in mind we will be running a session at São Paulo to explain the key findings and recommendations from the suite of legacy projects, and explore some of the issues that they have raised:

• Howengagementinskillscompetitionsdrivesbothmassparticipationandimprovedperformanceinvocational skills.

• Thebenefitsatsystemlevel,andforindividualinstitutions,competitorsandcoaches,andhowthosebenefits can be embedded into mainstream planning and practice for vocational skills.

• Thevaluesofbeingbotha‘contributorto’anda‘beneficiaryfrom’internationalWorldSkillspartnerships.

• Thetensionbetween‘massparticipation’and‘eliteperformance’.

There is plenty of scope, too, for collaboration at project level. Can we set up an Erasmus Plus project, perhaps, drawing on the work we’ve done on Continuing Professional Development through the Vocational Masterclass Project? Everyone understands that learners benefit most when their teachers and trainers are at the top of their game in both parts of their ‘dual professionalism’ – vocational and pedagogic. Finding the best way to do that in different sectors, and with different levels of student, is quite an undertaking, so let’s work together on it.

We know that the bringing together under Find a Future of WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions, The Skills Show and The Skills Show Experience has attracted a lot of interest. An odd couple, or a striking insight into what might be possible? We think the latter, because both parts of what we do support our ambition to inspire, to educate and to influence. We’re keen to work with others who want to see how to make this combination work for everyone’s advantage.

5 Available on the AoC WorldSkills web pages: see links at the end of the report.

http://www.findafuture.org.uk

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A to Z

Measuring the impact of skills competitions, on individuals and on organisations, is the mission, and there is much more to be done there, but the headlines are impressive:

• RegistrationsforWorldSkillsUKSkillsCompetitionshavegoneupeveryyearsince2012,andsohasthe number of colleges and other providers which are involved.

• ThenumberofcollegesandproviderswinningmedalsatTheSkillsShowhasgoneupeveryyear.

• TheEducationandTrainingFoundation-thenationalagencyleadingworkonprofessionaldevelopment for the Further Education, skills and apprenticeship workforce - has embedded work on CPD (continuing professional development) related to skills competitions in its programme, something covered explicitly in its grant letter from Government.

• 2,000professionalswillhaveattendedCPD-relatedskillscompetitionsessionsbyJuly2015.

• Trans-nationalpartnershipsbuiltonskillscompetitionsarenowinplacewithBrazil,China,IndiaandSouth Africa, systematically supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), and the British Council.

• November2014sawthelargestskillsandcareerseventTheSkillsShow,thenationalVocationalEducation and Training conference, and the national conference of the Association of Colleges take place.

The roll-call of achievement is impressive. Skills competitions:

• Focusonexcellence.

• Enthusebothlearnersandtrainers.

• Buildemployability.

• Buildtheprofessionalismoftheworkforceintheskillssector.

• Attractemployers.

• Attractpotentialrecruitstonewcareers.

• Attractgoodpublicityforskillsandvocationallearning.

• Supportinitiativeandenterprisingbehaviour.

• Supportlocally-designedresponsestoskillsneeds.AnimportantbutoftenneglectedroleofGovernment is simply to draw attention to things: it costs nothing and requires no legislation. People take notice of what Ministers and senior officials say, so point out the value of skills competitions in your speeches and on your visits, and point to the many ways in which colleges and training providers and employers can benefit.

There’s a place for money, too, of course. Judicious Government investment brings security and encourages others, and it provides the essential foundation on which others build.

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Share the learning

Learning is central to WorldSkills and open access to that learning should be a central principle.

In particular, WorldSkills standards should be easily available, and promoted, so that everyone in vocational education in the UK is aware of them and can use them in their work. When WorldSkills publishes the standards on its own website, which we understand will be soon, Find a Future should publicise the good news, and make a link available from its own website.

All other learning which flows from skills competitions should be shared and available to all, both formal research (with an expectation that such research will be actively disseminated, not just published) and the less formal, such as reviews of ‘lessons learned’ from each significant competition. The Inclusive Skills website is a good example.

Encourage others to share their learning with each other

Too much of the work at the moment relies upon expensive central resources. A little effort to stimulate and encourage practitioner networks will repay itself many times over. Something can be done with central initiatives to provide structures and support, such as a newsletter, but the real prize will come through liberating the energy and initiative of practitioners and professionals across the country so they share directly with each other, instead of having to go through central bodies.

A ‘community of practice’ will be faster and probably more effective in answering colleagues’ questions about where to find a college-wide strategy for skills competitions, for example, job descriptions for mentors, lists of Masterclass leaders in particular subjects, and so on. CASE (the Council for Advancement and Support of Education) is a good model of another community in the education field which has been particularly successful in encouraging a spirit of open sharing, both through volunteer-led workshops and conferences, and directly, peer to peer.

Be honest about the tensions and uncertainties

Learning feeds on honesty, and doubt, and questions. Skills competitions, particularly at the top levels, feed on rivalry, and celebration, and certainty of purpose.

The benefits of competitions in terms of medals achieved is recognised as a good opportunity to create PR however the benefits that competing brings to learning is less well recognised.

There is no conflict between the two, and the legacy programme shows very clearly how the two complement each other - but there is a tension. Harnessed, that tension is positive and feeds learning. Unacknowledged, it undermines. Find a Future should recognise that and promote effectively the full potential of competitions in its communications.

The same applies to this review. Why, despite all the evidence of its value reported here, is participation in skills competitions in the UK still a minority activity?

3. where nexT?

As the legacy projects draw to a close later this year, Find a Future and its partners will want to step back to take stock and settle plans for the next stage. This sections offers some suggestions.

Be clear about goals

Medal success is central to WorldSkills, highly visible and easy to understand. Sharing the lessons from Competition activity, especially at elite level, is much less visible, harder to articulate – but just as central. These legacy projects show that the two goals complement each other well, but they have not had equal attention. Explicit recognition that both matter will help to ensure that the benefits of skills competitions for the many, not just for the few, are properly understood, and followed-up.

Be clear about leadership

Many organisations have been involved in the legacy projects, but until latterly it has not been a coordinated programme, and even now it is coordinated, but not led. Real success will come through leadership.

Leadership should be inclusive because different organisations reach different people, and there is a role for many - but this work needs a single organisation, with a strong individual at its head, charged by all with leading the work.

Tell the story – and keep telling it

The Legacy Programme is gold dust, but not nearly well enough known. There is a great story to tell and it needs to be told so that those who only see stories about medal success (if they see those) understand how skills competitions can help them do their job.

The task is to keep spreading the news. It needs a strategy and a campaign, not just press releases for particular occasions.

Embrace the variety

There are lots of skills competitions in the UK – including many which are not part of WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions6. Skills competitions are a good thing, so that’s an opportunity, not a problem. It is an opportunity to draw in people and organisations no matter which door they choose to come through. And an opportunity to share what they learn.

And though there may be a challenge there for Find a Future in terms of their own branding, it’s also an opportunity to set some standards for skills competitions and encourage others to meet them, so everyone who gets involved has a good experience.

An inclusive network with high standards, will make more difference for more people than an exclusive club.

6 Team UK competitors can only come from WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions.

http://www.inclusiveskills.co.uk

http://www.case.org/

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FinD OUT mOreWebsites

WorldSkills www.worldskills.org

WorldSkills – the Standards [to follow]

Find a Future findafuture.org.uk

WorldSkills UK worldskillsuk.org

Association of Colleges WorldSkills Legacy Projects bit.ly/AoCLegacy

DuVE vocationalexcellence.education.ox.ac.uk

Inclusive Skills Competitions www.inclusiveskills.co.uk

EuroSkills 2014 Lille www.euroskills2014.org

EuroSkills 2016 Gothenburg euroskills2016.se

Practical tools for employers, colleges and training providers

A to Z of Skills Competitions - WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions

Coaching Manual - WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions

Inspiring excellence: a guide to embedding skills competition activity in apprenticeships and vocational learning - LSIS, 2012

Organising a Masterclass – materials and guidance at https://worldskillsuk.org/organising-a-masterclass

VocationalMasterclassProgrammeYouTubechannel:https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldSkillsVMP

Reading

The DuVE suite of reports is an excellent source of references to previous research.

Going the extra mile: competitiveness in school sport - Ofsted, 2014

WorldSkills conducts a good deal of research, clearly linked on the new website.

WorldSkills Legacy Projects - Association of Colleges, 2014

Who’s Who

WorldSkills WorldSkills is the global hub for skills development and excellence. Through international cooperation and development between industry, government, organisations, and institutions, we promote the benefits of and need for skilled professionals through grass-roots community projects, skill competitions, and knowledge exchange. We show how important skills education and training is for youth, industries and society by challenging young professionals around the world to become the best in the skill of their choice.

Find A Future brings together the UK’s largest skills and careers experiences: WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions, The Skills Show, and The Skills Show Experience.

Association of Colleges WorldSkills Portfolio Group is a UK-wide group of college Principals and others which promotes better use of skills competitions.


http://www.worldskillsuk.org

http://bit.ly/AoCLegacy

http://www.vocationalexcellence.education.ox.ac.uk

http://www.euroskills2016.se

Find a Future is the organisation that brings together WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions, The Skills Show and The Skills Show Experience, providing every young person with the chance to unlock their potential and get excited about the world of work. Through hands-on experiential activities and skills competitions we help shape their futures and transform their lives.

Find a Future, Floor Four, 157-197 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9SP

T 0800 612 0742 E [email protected] W findafuture.org.ukFind a Future is registered in England at the above address, charity number 1001586, company number 02535199, VAT registration number GB945610716

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