Five excellence awards to Portugal at the WorldSkills 2017

Five excellence awards to Portugal at the WorldSkills 2017

October 2017 marked the end of another WorldSkills event that is held every two years and is the biggest vocational education and professional qualification competition in the world that truly reflects global industry.

To the Portuguese team of participants, it represented a journey that started in 2015 with 150 VET institutions and 1500 young learners who participated in several preparation stages for the National championship of professions in Coimbra 2016. It led to 17 highly qualified young learners that represented Portugal at the WorldSkills held this year Abu Dhabi.

The Portuguese competitors awarded excellence medals confirmed the high level of performance throughout their path:

  • Admário Ferreira in the automobile mechatronics profession from CEPRA won the titles of excellence and “Best of Nation” (the highest Portuguese ranking). Besides the gold medal, he obtained in the National championships of professions in Coimbra 2016, rose to the podium of the EuroSkills 2016 in Gothenburg to receive the silver medal.
  • Fábio Oliveira and Pedro Sardinha in the mechatronic profession from CENFIM were awarded gold medals at the national championship and excellence medals at EuroSkills 2016.
  • José Pereira in the industrial control profession from CENFIM won one gold medal at the national championship and the title of “Best of Nation” in EuroSkills 2016.
  • Renato Carvalho in the CAD profession from CENFIM won one gold medal at the national championship and one bronze medal at EuroSkills 2016.

Other participants received merit certificates: Alexandre Ferreira in the cooking area from Escola Hotelaria e Turismo do Douro; António Moreira in the stonework area from the Gárgula Gótica enterprise, one of the sponsors of this event and Manuel Gonçalves, in the carpentry area from the Employment and Vocational Training Centre of Braga.http://escolas.turismodeportugal.pt/en/escola/escola-do-turismo-de-portugal-douro-lamego

These competitions address young people between 17 and 25 years old, in VET modalities and aim at demonstrating the participants’ skills, such as rigour and mastery of techniques and tools for the exercise of each profession in competition, through practical performance tests.

The winners of the national championship apply to participate in the European and World Championships organised, respectively, by WorldSkills Europe and WorldSkills International.

One of the WorldSkills competitions’ goals is advertising the importance of VET as one of the tools for socio-economic transformation.

The competition also provides an opportunity to exchange information and show best practices in VET. New ideas and processes inspire school-aged youth to dedicate themselves to technical and technological careers.

The event highlighted the importance of partnerships, both in organising the preparation of the event and in making VET skills a central part of Portugal’s economy and society. One of those partnerships set between WorldSkills Portugal and CENJOR, whose representatives filmed and conducted interviews during the event.

Recently, pieces of this work were available through WorldSkills Portugal’s social media channels.

As a result of a successful journey in WorldSkills competition, the President of IEFP, and the Vice President and Official Delegate of WorldSkills Portugal explained the need to invest on events with this dimension as a way to achieve the high-level standard aimed at the professional training developed by IEFP centers.

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