Over 500 of the best students and apprentices from all over the UK came together for hours of intense competition in November, to be crowned as WorldSkills UK National Final winners.

WorldSkills is a global movement of over 80 countries which supports young people across the world via competition-based training. The UK National Final saw young people compete in 62 disciplines from 3D Digital Game Art to Laboratory Technician, and medalists were announced during an online celebration event on Friday 25 November.

An impressive 130 Welsh competitors have been announced as finalists for the WorldSkills UK National Finals taking place this November, seven of which are from Gower College Swansea!

The announcement follows a series of regional competitions that took place across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, hosting a string of talented young people. 

The finalists from Gower College Swansea are:

Foundation Skills: Restaurant Services

Ben Lewis, an electronics apprentice at Gower College Swansea, is set to represent Team UK at the WorldSkills 2022 competition in China.

Gower College Swansea student, Scott Tavner, has been entered straight into the WorldSkills Lyon squad after his outstanding performance in the WorldSkills UK 2021 National Finals.

WorldSkills is a global movement of over 80 countries, which supports young people across the world via competitions-based training, assessment, and benchmarking. The WorldSkills competitions are known by many as the ‘skills Olympics’, with competitors being trained to develop their personal and employability skills, as well as technical.

Fourteen of the UK’s best young apprentices and professionals have been selected to take on the crème de la crème of their European peers in the first big skills pressure test of the post Brexit era – EuroSkills.

Rhys Watts, Electronic Engineering Apprentice Technician at Gower College Swansea, is the youngest of the team, representing the UK in the Electronics Prototyping category.

During the recent WorldSkills Kazan 2019 competition event, no less than six of the 19 medals won by Team UK came from Wales.

Among the medal winners was Collette Gorvett, who studied Hospitality and Catering at Gower College Swansea before being snapped up by The Ritz in London. Collette competed in the Restaurant Services category, where she impressed the judges with her talents in making mocktails, restaurant mise en place and fine dining, and was eventually awarded a coveted Medallion of Excellence.

Electronic Engineering students from Gower College Swansea have taken part in a WorldSkills UK regional heat at the Tycoch Campus.

The regional heat, part of the WorldSkills competition framework and organised in partnership with SEMTA, comprised three practical activities - electronic construction, test and measurement, fault finding – and a theory test.

The top students from this event will go forward to the next stage in the competition, with the ultimate goal being selection to represent Wales and the UK on the global stage.

Electronic Engineering students from Gower College Swansea scooped two of the top three prizes at the recent Skills Competition Wales finals (Industrial Electronics).

Taking home the Gold was Rhys Watts, closely followed by Ben Lewis with a Silver - both students are on Level 3 courses at the Tycoch Campus.

Daniel Holmes from Coleg Cambria was placed third.

The Skills Competition Wales finals were held over two days, with the Southern region hosted by Gower College Swansea and the Northern region competitors gathering at Coleg Cambria.

The UK’s top apprentices and learners will be going for gold at the WorldSkills UK LIVE National Finals on 15-17 November.

Among them will be two Electronic Engineering students from Gower College Swansea - Matthew Belton and Jamie Skyrme.

They will attend the event at the Birmingham NEC and undertake a challenging set of competition tasks including fault finding, electronic design, programming and prototyping.