Pembrokeshire College has helped to launch brand-new Skills Competition Wales category for inclusive learners.
Inspiring Skills Excellence in Wales announced the launch of its brand-new Inclusive Skills: Independent Living Skills competition to join this year’s Skills Competition Wales cycle, after support from the college.
Funded by the Welsh Government and through the Inspiring Skills Excellence in Wales project, Skills Competition Wales aims to inspire and upskill future generations by developing young people’s vocational skills while celebrating their achievements.
The new Independent Living Skills category will join the 11 existing Inclusive Skills categories in this year’s Skills Competition Wales line-up to give young people with disabilities and learning difficulties the opportunity to challenge, benchmark and raise their skills.
David Jones, learner transition co-ordinator at Pembrokeshire College, has been heavily involved with the implementation of the new category, along with his cohort of colleagues at the college’s Life Skills Academy – a growing curriculum area offering a range of programmes to suit learners with additional learning needs.
“As a team, we started to notice that although we had a lot of interest from our Life Skills Academy learners to take part in Skills Competition Wales,” he said.
“There wasn’t always a competition that was relevant to their area of likely progression. That’s when we started looking at developing a brief for a new skills category; to give learners who wanted to develop their skills through competition-led training a chance to get involved.”
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Having put forward the initial idea, David and the team at Pembrokeshire College played a key role in developing the new Independent Life Skills category.
“The Independent Living Skills category is all about helping young people gain the knowledge and develop the behaviours required to live successfully on their own,” he said.
“Many of our learners at the Life Skills Academy are keen to live by themselves, so this category hopes to offer a fun and unique way of showcasing individual learners who are ready to reach this milestone.”
“The competitors’ knowledge and skills will be tested in a supportive way across a range of subject areas, including health and safety, money skills, hygiene and decision making; all key components needed to highlight their independence and employability skills.”
Paul Evans, Project Leader at the Inspiring Skills Wales project said: “We were thrilled when the team at Pembrokeshire College’s Life Skills Academy came forward with this suggestion. We really want to make the competitions as diverse and inclusive as possible. It’s been a brilliant experience collaborating to ensure this is possible.”
This year, 14 learners from the college’s Life Skills Academy were entered into Inclusive and Foundation competitions - six of whom made it to the WorldSkills UK National Finals.
Registrations for this year’s Skills Competition Wales cycle are open between 21 November 2022 - 5 December 2022.
For more information on the competitions and to be in with a chance to take part, visit https://inspiringskills.gov.wales/
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