Recently, my parents asked me: ‘How are you going to sort out your work-life balance? Are you going to give up that WorldSkills thing?’,” says Julianne Lavery, the WorldSkills UK training manager for visual merchandising.

“My instinct was to shout ‘No!’,” she adds, laughing. “But I wouldn’t be so quick to say that about my other jobs. There’s just something so positive about WorldSkills: the process, the team, the solidarity, the skills. It’s hard, hard work but it’s amazing.”

It is a huge commitment to be a training manager. WorldSkills is a biennial competition in which 16- to 25-year-olds challenge their peers from across the globe in a range of disciplines from bricklaying to hairdressing, aircraft maintenance to chemical laboratory technology.

Winning a medal - and even competing - is something that takes the young people involved years of training. Many spend hours a day for months perfecting their skills in the run-up to the contest. And for the 37 members of Team UK, it’s crunch time. Next week, they fly out to Russia for WorldSkills Kazan 2019.

But they are not on this competition journey on their own. Beside them, every step of the way, is a training manager - an expert in the industry who, in many cases, has been a WorldSkills competitor in the past.

Some of these training managers run successful businesses; others lecture in further and higher education. They come from different backgrounds but all share the drive and determination to coach young people towards excellence.

Dedication’s what you need

It is a vital role - and not just for WorldSkills. Some argue that these training managers could be the key to improving the standard of skills training across the country.

The individuals have an unparalleled insight into the highest standards of vocational expertise on show anywhere on the globe. But they are a largely untapped resource. At present, they each work with only a handful of protégés.

Lavery believes she and her peers could have a much bigger role to play. “If we want to fight for our economy, if we want to be leaders in excellence, if we want to be the best at skills, we need to understand the significance of WorldSkills. It’s insane not to share it,” she says.

Training managers judge national competitions, develop the learning programme for competitors and train the most promising talent to medal-winning standard after picking them through a gruelling selection process.

Lavery is a single parent who travels for four hours a day and currently has four jobs: she is a senior lecturer in visual merchandising for the University of Westminster and Istituto Marangoni, a private fashion school in Spitalfields. She also freelances in industry for two days a week as well as carrying out her work for WorldSkills UK.

Alongside the coaching element of the role, training managers are expected to act as ambassadors for WorldSkills UK, to generate investment from education and/or industry to secure the UK’s participation in their skill, and to support the transfer of global best practice across education and industry in the UK.

Officially, it requires up to 91 days of their time over the two-year cycle. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to Sean Owens (pictured, opposite), the WorldSkills UK training manager for cookery: “They couldn’t pay you for the amount of days you actually do put in,” he says.

Lavery talks of staying up until 2am or 3am every night working on the competition, while Mike Spence, the training manager for 3D game art, says that around 40 per cent of his working year is spent on WorldSkills, although it filters into other areas of his life.

Linzi Weare, the training manager for hairdressing says her phone is always buzzing with emails about WorldSkills, whether they are from another member of Team UK or an international training manager asking for advice.

There’s a lot of travel involved, too. Owens lives in Northern Ireland while his competitor, Sam Everton, lives in Wales. They meet in Glasgow to train for eight-day blocks throughout the cycle.

And then there’s the international travel for the EuroSkills and WorldSkills training camps, as well as the competitions themselves: the past two European competitions were in Budapest, Hungary (in 2018) and Gothenburg, Sweden (in 2016). Meanwhile WorldSkills 2017 took place in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and in 2015 it was held in São Paulo, Brazil. In the past eight weeks, Owens and Everton have been to Australia, Finland, Russia and China for international pressure tests.

Changing lives

It’s an intense and all-consuming role. So why do it? Why dedicate months - even years - to a competition? Weare, a previous gold-medal-winning competitor, says it is the satisfaction of seeing WorldSkills change lives.

“I just want to put someone through this and give them the chance I got,” she says. “It’s not just the skills; it’s not like, ‘I’m going to do a little competition for a bit and then go back to what I used to do’ - it really shapes these youngsters for ever.

“I know when I see [my competitor] at the opening ceremony, I’ll be like, ‘Oh, my God’ - it’s not that I’ve put her there but you’ve had this massive influence on why those young people are there.”

Marc Pate, training manager for architectural stonemasonry, knows all too well the impact WorldSkills can have - he, too, was a competitor. But he doesn’t brag about his own experience; instead he talks about Ethan Conlon, the competitor he is training.

Conlon didn’t excel at school. He left and began working for his father’s stonemasonry company. He was under a lot of pressure and had a lot to prove but soon revealed his dedication to the job. At 16, he got a bus to work every morning at 5.30am. Now, two years later, Conlon is positive about training, communicates clearly, understands standards and works incredibly hard, Pate says.

“The work he produces is phenomenal,” Pate adds. “No matter what, if he goes to the competition and does the best piece of work possible, I’ll be so proud. His mental attitude is fantastic. I know that when he finishes, he’ll take that into work. These lads and girls are the future of our industry.”

WorldSkills is more than just a competition. Arguably, it is a way to raise standards across FE and industry as a whole - and training managers are key to that. All competitors are judged, and therefore trained, at international standards of excellence, way above the current level the UK offers in apprenticeships and vocational courses. Naturally, the competitors and their training managers bring those skills back into their classrooms and workplaces.

For Spence, his motivation comes from that - from seeing the industry he loves grow in prominence, gain highly skilled and passionate workers, and produce truly excellent work.

It was Spence who was instrumental in WorldSkills’ decision to introduce a competition in 3D game art in 2012. He had been running other competitions across the UK for a few years beforehand to “bring legitimacy to the UK’s education sector for games”.

He explains: “It’s very difficult to link education with industry across the world. But this competition brings together lecturers and specialists, software developers and industry artists, and young 3D artists before they go to university.

“I wanted to make sure the quality across the UK was improved so that education raised their standards and produced great young people who were prepared to work.”

Channelling creativity

The competition provides a window not only into our national working space but the international one, too. The level of exposure to international standards of skill is a huge privilege, says Owens. The opportunity to learn from other countries and develop his own skill set is part of his motivation.

“The chance to see and learn from other international experts, particularly in our skill [cooking], where there are major cultural differences in what we produce, is absolutely fantastic,” he says. “Although you get the same test product, you wouldn’t believe the amount of innovation and creativity coming from countries who you wouldn’t even think would have a handle on that type of cuisine.”

When you combine that level of expertise with the passion training managers have for their skill, plus the sophisticated level of coaching they can offer - well, who wouldn’t want a slice of that?

In June last year, then skills minister Anne Milton launched Taking Teaching Further, a £5 million scheme to retrain up to 150 professionals from sectors such as engineering and computing as FE teachers. In the first wave, 47 new teachers were recruited. And in May, it was announced that 54 providers had been granted funding to recruit more (bit.ly/WorldSkillsfunding).

The idea may be sound but it’s also expensive. There’s another problem, too. Ben Blackledge, deputy chief executive of WorldSkills, says that as soon as you take professionals away from the workplace and into teaching, their skills immediately become outdated.

This is a conundrum when you consider the Team UK training managers. Here are international experts, all working in industry, all committed to FE: they’re a powerful link between industry and education. So, what is being done to draw on their expertise?

Widely, the answer is “very little”. The training managers themselves do what they can - most offer CPD to colleges, lecturers and their colleagues. Pate trains Conlon at his local college to give other students access to what he can offer. Lavery introduced a WorldSkills module into her course at the University of Westminster, which looks at the mindset and problem-solving skills required to succeed at competitions as well as the highly technical skills that competitors need to master.

Impressive impact

According to a recent report by WorldSkills UK, Good People in a Flawed System (bit.ly/GoodPeopleFlawed), training managers impact on the knowledge and skills development of approximately 4,000 young people in the two-year cycle of competitions. For a team of 35 people, that’s impressive. But when you consider that there are currently 602,400 apprentices (bit.ly/ApprenticeNos) and, according to the Association of Colleges’ 2016-17 data, 1,139,000 16- to 24-year-olds studying in a college (bit.ly/CollegeNos), it’s clear that the influence of WorldSkills expertise - no matter how powerful - is relatively small.

“The benefits are seen by the people within our reach but it needs to be embedded into a much bigger, democratic system,” says Lavery. “No matter how much we implement individually, it doesn’t change the qualifications. That’s the big question, isn’t it? How do we bring this forward into mainstream? Can we change the qualification system? Or can we embed in some other, smaller ways?”

The Augar report (bit.ly/AugarReport) highlighted the importance of aiming for excellence in FE. According to WorldSkills UK, this isn’t happening: its report says that there’s a general feeling among training managers that colleges and private training providers are “always a few years behind” - and that the standards aimed for in most qualifications are not commensurate with what industry wants and needs. The standards they achieve through the WorldSkills programme are, however, exactly what industry wants and needs.

The solution appears simple: why not formally embed these standards of excellence into FE? In 2018, the Institute for Apprenticeships told Tes that WorldSkills standards were already being used to inform the content of apprenticeships being developed. And, in the government’s apprenticeship funding rules, it is made clear that preparation for, and attendance at, skills competitions counts towards the off-the-job training component, which must make up 20 per cent of an apprentice’s time. But is that enough?

Unfortunately not, says Pate. “If you make ‘excellence’ the standard, you create the opportunity for students to learn up to excellence. If the standard is ‘acceptable’, they will get acceptable and suddenly ‘excellence’ is left alone.”

Not all students will achieve excellence but could putting the option on the table raise the standards of the system?

Blackledge believes so. He cites the example of Barry Skea, the training manager for mechanical engineering computer-aided design. At his institution, New College Lanarkshire, Skea has built the course to adhere to international standards. He travels around the country with WorldSkills telling FE lecturers about the importance of upskilling their classrooms in a similar way.

It’s not always as easy as that and Blackledge says, first, the system needs to be resourced properly. Once it is, systemic change can be brought about, and the government’s world-class ambitions can become a reality.

A matter of funding

So, like so many things in FE, it comes back to funding. The FE sector has been starved of cash - something that the Commons Education Select Committee recognised last month. In a recent report (bit.ly/SelComReport), the committee urged MPs to place FE at the centre of a 10-year spending plan for education.

To achieve standards of excellence, colleges need to have the necessary equipment - and that isn’t feasible in the current climate.

Resources aside, Blackledge says, there is much that can be done to upskill college staff before the “wall of funding is hit”. He points to the WorldSkills report, which suggests eight ways to bring training managers’ expertise into the system. Recommendations include involving them in the development of qualifications and incorporating WorldSkills-specific time into curriculum development.

But what would this look like in practice?

“There are so many reforms happening at the moment - the Trailblazers, the T levels, the constant reviews of end-point assessment. If we have that resource, wealth and knowledge there, why not use them as part of those reforms?” asks Blackledge. “They can go between the employers and the education; they can speak both languages.”

He also highlights the importance of CPD - the more staff and trainers who know about the WorldSkills methodology of learning, the more likely it is to be built into curricula.

WorldSkills UK, Blackledge says, is looking at a national way to offer this, in both physical and virtual spaces: “There isn’t real parity of esteem between academic and vocational education - how we view tutors and trainers in FE, and professors and lecturers from university.

“What we’re saying is, we’ve got world-class trainers, teachers, experts who go out internationally and compete against the best in the world. They need to be put on a pedestal, they need to be praised, they need to be used.”

Lavery agrees, and says distributing training managers’ expertise to every college across the UK is vital. “It advances people’s skills, their careers, the economy and feeds into education and into industry,” she argues. “Everything you need to do to keep an economy and a system moving, WorldSkills does.”

Kate Parker is a further education reporter at Tes. She tweets @KateeParker

This article originally appeared in the 16 August 2019 issue under the headline “The whole world in their hands”