Joan Scott, assistant principal at the Trafford College Group, loves winning. As a child, she was obsessed with gaining Blue Peter badges. 

“I often would write to the BBC and tell them about what I’d done on the farm, and they sent me a Blue Peter badge. Then I wrote again, and they sent me another Blue Peter badge. And then I was telling them about a lamb I’d saved from dying and they sent me a silver Blue Peter badge, which has got a blue background with a little silver ship on it,” she says.

“I didn’t realise they did silver ones, so it got me thinking what I’d have to do to get a gold one. I think I was about 8 or 9. They wrote back, and said gold badges were only awarded in very special circumstances, such as if you rescued someone from a burning house or from drowning. And I thought, how am I going to do that?”

Scott never did get her gold Blue Peter badge - previous recipients include the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, Sir David Attenborough and The Queen - but last November, Scott added another accolade to her collection when she was crowned the first-ever winner of Tes FE’s WorldSkills unsung hero award. 

Scott says she was determined to win - “I was saying, ‘I’m going to smash it - put it out there, have some positive thinking,’ then I thought I’d better prepare myself for being disappointed,” she laughs.

And, of course, she did smash it. You see, Scott had dedicated her life to instilling a love of skills competitions into thousands of young people. As well as coordinating the skills competition steering group for Greater Manchester Colleges Group, she hosts two national education forums for beauty therapy lecturers. 

News: WorldSkills UK unveils £1.5m Centre of Excellence

Background: Joan Scott wins at the Tes FE Awards 2020

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Scott grew up in Askham in the Lake District and was one of four children. Her father was a sheep farmer, and she says she loved growing up on a farm and in a small community. As a child, she was shy and quiet, and got involved in competitions at junior school because the recognition gave her confidence.

Discovering the power of winning

“To win a competition, it’s so memorable, especially if you’ve not had the experience before or you feel insecure and lacking confidence. You never forget how it makes you feel,” she says. 

At grammar school, Scott thought of being a nurse but changed track when she discovered a book called Beauty Culture in the library. From then on, her world was make-up. After completing her A levels, she moved to Abraham Moss, a college in Manchester that was just one of three across the country to offer a beauty course. She says she loved her time there, and left with the hope of becoming a make-up artist for the BBC.

With the other graduates from her course, she travelled to London to audition in Shepherd’s Bush, but wasn’t successful. Not wanting to move back to the Lake District, Scott stayed in Manchester and found a role on the city’s version of Harley Street at a physio practice. There she worked with a number of high-profile clients  - footballers from Manchester United and Manchester City and the West Indies cricket team, to name a few - and absolutely loved it. 

After a few years, Scott had a choice to make: train as a physio or return to the beauty world. The latter won out, and she set up a salon in Manchester. It was then she started to think: should I get into teaching part-time?

“Teaching was always the furthest career from my mind because I never wanted to stand up in front of anybody or have the attention focused on me. At college, when friends had said they might want to go into teaching, I just thought, ‘Oh my God, are you mad? Why would you ever want to do that?’” she says.  

“But I thought, ‘Why not? I’ll apply,’ and immediately I got 12 hours a week, which was the maximum you could do back then. And unbelievably, I’ve now been teaching in further education for 30 years.”

The beauty of teaching in FE colleges

And, despite her initial concerns, Scott showed an aptitude for teaching straight away. When she first started, there were just 12 learners in the hair and beauty department at South Trafford College - over time, thousands signed on to study everything from crystal therapy to aromatherapy. As time went on, Scott climbed the ladder: from lecturer to team leader to head of department and then director.

Key to her success was a determination to embed work and cultural experience, as well as - you guessed it - competitions into the courses. 

“My view is when you look back on your college days, there are two things which stand out and are memorable: the trips you went on, like London or Paris, and the competitions you were involved in,” she says. 

“The rest of the course is a bit of a blur, but competitions are real milestones - and, of course, you’re pushed to do your absolute best and hone those skills to be excellent.”

And while hair and beauty competitions grew in popularity across the college, Scott moved into looking after hospitality, business and health and social care departments, too. When South Trafford merged with North Trafford to become Trafford College, she moved across to oversee Stem subjects. Today, she oversees adult education and apprenticeships. The variety, she says, is what she loves about FE. 

“It’s been quite a journey in FE. I know I’m not in a rut because every year is different. There’s so many things you are involved with - it’s never a dull moment. FE is a fantastic sector. It’s undervalued in many ways, but it’s amazing and so important in the lives of many young people and adults,” she says. 

And no matter which department she’s looking after, Scott spreads the word about the power of competitions. Eight years ago, she took the opportunity to spread it across the region. 

It was the mid-2010s and all of the colleges in Greater Manchester were involved in a local enterprise competition. After one year, they all decided to enter again. When the man leading the competition left, Scott took over. And she had big plans. 

“I asked them, ‘Why don’t we just go full-out? Let’s agree all 10 colleges will host a competition each year’” she says.

And that’s exactly what happened. The colleges chose 10 skills areas and each college was given ownership of an area in which to organise a competition. Pre-pandemic, there were around 55 competitions across the colleges with 750 learners participating. 

When a WorldSkills northern ambassador became involved, Scott encouraged the colleges to enter every student registered for the regional competitions into World Skills. She was keen to increase registrations and even introduced a league table of college entries to encourage healthy competition. Today, the North West is the most productive region for WorldSkills activity in the country. 

The experience that the competitions give students is life-changing, Scott says. 

“The slogan ‘further, faster’ absolutely sums it up because the students do go further and really accelerate their skills, and the employers love it. I know people who’ve been offered a job just because they’ve been involved in WorldSkills. If you put it on your CV, if you’ve been involved, whichever discipline it is, they know you’ve had to be one of the best in the country,” she explains.

And the impact these competitions have on the quality of teaching, she says, is transformational.

“You might be in your little world thinking you’re doing OK, but when you put your students into the competition, and you go, ‘It’s so disappointing that they didn’t do very well,’ or, ‘Oh God, look at the standard,’ and then students and staff realise they’ve got to compete with the best in the city, the region or the UK. When they’re disappointed with their result, they get very competitive and say, ‘We can do better than this,’ and then they absolutely nail it next year,” Scott says.

The power of WorldSkills

“That’s the ethos of the new WorldSkills’ Centre of Excellence, and we were delighted to be one of the 20 UK colleges selected. The project is taking their international insights, specifications and the standards, and embedding them into the college, which is invaluable. It means you’re not settling for competent or ‘good enough’ but driving standards and performance so students are developing excellent skills, which is what industry expects.”

When it comes to personal experience and growth, Scott says the opportunities she has to get involved in skills competitions, and in particular in the hair and beauty sector, is a dream.

“I’m so lucky, I feel I’ve got a dream career. I love further education. I get to be involved with apprenticeships, adult learning, community engagement, competitions and hair and beauty. My role is so rewarding. To get involved in skills competitions, and actually just to go and see it for myself internationally, was so interesting. I missed out on going to WorldSkills Brazil, but was determined to visit the event Abu Dhabi two year later - even if I had to pay for it myself - and it was a fantastic trip.

“To see the international competitions first hand was amazing. It was the year Kaiya Swain represented Team UK for beauty therapy and to see her win the gold medal was fantastic. From a beauty therapy point of view, it was really informative to witness the high level of skill involved in WorldSkills finals. It was the pinnacle of skills excellence to see them all immaculately turned out, so professional, performing a wide range of treatments with hundreds of people watching them. And then to be at the medal ceremony, and to see Kaiya win the gold medal, the absolute best in the world, was just amazing.”

Team UK has won a gold medal at WorldSkills and EuroSkills for three consecutive years. When Rebecca West won gold in Kazan in 2019, Scott says she was in the queue at the takeaway. 

“Jill Goddard at World Skills UK  rang me within minutes of the medal being awarded and shouted, ‘We’ve won beauty again - we’ve won gold!’ and although it’s not my student, it was just so emotional.

“I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think Team UK would keep winning the gold medals for beauty therapy in Brazil, Abu Dhabi and now Russia, truly recognising UK beauty therapy as the best in the world.”

But they did, and there’s no doubt about it: Joan Scott had, and continues to have, a major role in that recognition.