When Utdanning East kicks off this year’s Finnmark Championship in Vocational Studies on Tuesday 9 February, they do so with the knowledge that vocational competitions raise the quality of education and that the business community gets more professionally trained workers. This is what we can read from the results from vocational studies in recent years. The grades get better and the students graduate!
A digital boost
This year’s Finnmark Championship is spread all over the schools in Finnmark, with Kirkenes upper secondary school as digital coordinator and master of ceremonies. Of course, it is the coronavirus that has led the organizing school to use digital tools, but it is impressive to see that the schools in the county can adapt to serious infection control measures and implement such a demanding scheme as this. Rector Øystein Hansen at Kirkenes upper secondary school is full of praise for teachers and students who tackle dented car screens, delicate recipes, party hairstyles, demanding nursing patients and other professional tasks to be solved in future Finnmark. “Everyone has so far solved the tasks with creativity and goodwill,” he says, adding that he is sure that they will tackle the digital challenges when the competition day comes.
The public can follow the competitions
The competitions are streamed in collaboration with iFinnmark, with views on iFinnmark’s platforms, and on the online and Facebook pages of Kirkenes Upper secondary School and TFFK. This is done separately from the competitions in Teams. Joakim Pettersen works to get the competition out to the public «As it looks now, we have the opportunity to get live broadcasts from all participating schools, but it requires that we have some people at each school who can film and possibly comment during the features from the school . Necessary training will be given for the filming, but it will be so simple that even principals will be able to do it” he adds jokingly. Information about links to the broadcasts will be posted on the Facebook pages of TFFK and Kirkenes Upper secondary, and there the public will also find a broadcast schedule and an overview of which competences are in the competition.
Digital ArcticSkills
The Finnmark Championship is a qualification for ArcticSkills, which will also be held digitally this year. The planning and implementation of FM helps to build a platform for AS. At the same time, Murmansk County is arranging its regional qualification digitally, and project manager in AS, Robert Flatli, emphasizes that the experiences from the two regional competitions will be discussed at a board meeting in ArcticSkills later in February. “We will do our utmost to continue the project and achieve the goals we have set for the vocational skills in the Barents region,” he says firmly.
