Five Motheo TVET College students in Bloemfontein will be heading off to France to represent South Africa in the WorldSkills International Competition in September this year.
They are among the winners of the 5th WorldSkills South Africa National Competition, Conference and Career Festival that took place in Durban earlier this month.
Two hundred skilled individuals and 600 delegates attended the conference. Students demonstrated their unique abilities and talents. Beauty therapy, hairdressing, graphic design and aircraft maintenance were some of the skills that were displayed.
Beauty therapy gold medal winner, Keabetsoe Moloi says, “Everyone is quite calm. I didn’t feel intimidated by any of them, like I was just ready because I always say, my competition is not the other competitors, my only enemy is time and I’m only in competition with myself. When I found out I won, I didn’t believe it, I really did not believe it.”
Hairdressing bronze winner, Tshireletso Metlae says, “I think I won this competition basically because I had a lot of confidence in myself even though I saw sometimes that the work that I did, didn’t really show up as I wanted but I had this confidence in me that I can make it, no matter what goes through because I practiced hard for this.”
TVET Colleges play a crucial role in the economic development of the country. According to the Motheo TVET College Principal who is also the President of the South African Public Colleges Organisation, Professor Dipiloane Phutsisi, the college’s support assisted the students who participated in the WorldSkills South Africa competition to ignite their talent and passion.
Phutsisi says the training outcome of the students has been fruitful.
“We work as a team and as a principal I’ve taken it upon myself to expose everyone irrespective of your level. We follow up as a principal. I’m just there on your nose to ensure that implementation takes place because, without monitoring and evaluation there’s no good practice. For us as an institution, when students that we trained, who qualified from us, demonstrate such a capability it prides us so much and it confirms that the teaching and learning and skills programmes that we offer at the college are of high quality.”
