Competing at Worldskills Shizuoka, 2007
2007 saw the 39th Worldskills finals hosted in Shizuoka, Japan. The UK team of 21 members, representing a wide range of industry sectors, flew half-way across the globe to showcase their talents in search of International accolade.
After already achieving national acclaim for his back-to-back Skillbuild Gold medals in 2005 and 2006, Ingersent Interiors' founder and director, Ben Ingersent, was selected to be amongst the UK hopefuls. After 4 days of intense competition, he had achieved a high enough standard in his work to be awarded a 'Medallion of Excellence' in recognition of his skills, and ranking him amongst the top 10 Joinery apprentices in the world!
"Japan really was a fantastic experience for myself in so many ways. The advanced training propelled my joinery skill set and instilled in me a real passion for the trade. I reflect back on my time with Team UK extremely fondly, and look forward to hopefully being in a position to train my own world class apprentice some day."
What is WorldSkills?
WorldSkills supports young people across the world via competitions-based training, assessment and benchmarking, with members' national teams ultimately testing their ability to achieve world-class standards at the 'skills olympics'.
WorldSkills organizes the world championships of vocational skills and is held every two years in different parts of the world. The organization, which also hosts conferences about vocational skills, describes itself as the global hub for skills.
Who are WorldskillsUK?
WorldSkills UK is a four nations partnership between education, industry and UK governments. It is a world-class skills network acting as a catalyst for:
• raising standards, through international
benchmarking and professional
development
• championing future skills, through analysis of rapidly changing economic demand
• empowering young people, from all
backgrounds, through competitions-based
training and careers advocacy.
We are working to help the UK become a ‘skills economy’, boosting the prestige of technical and professional education by embedding world-class training standards across the UK to help drive investment, jobs and economic growth.