Full list of results by competition area for the 2016 WorldSkills UK Skills Show competition finals. 

Scottish and Welsh Colleges have emerged as the big winners at the Skills Show 2016 in Birmingham as they claimed the top three positions in the official medal table

New College Lanarkshire won the most medals and took the top spot with 32 points, made up of four gold, two silver, four bronze and two highly commended medals.

City of Glasgow college, who took the top spot in 2015, came second followed by Coleg Sir Gar in third. The full medal table is available here.

The closing ceremony, which took place on Saturday at Birmingham’s NEC, marked the end of national skills competitions finals.

Winners were presented with their awards at a special awards evening, attended by around 1,000 people, which featured an opening speeche by Carol Stott, chair of organisers WorldSkills UK and was hosted by TV presenter Will Best.

More than 500 talented young people took part in competitions covering 61 different skills from bricklaying to web design. After two days of intense competition independent judges assessed the work of competitors.

More than 500 talented young people took part in competitions covering 61 different skills from bricklaying to web design. After two days of intense competition independent judges assessed the work of competitors.

Skills and Apprenticeship minister, Robert Halfon, attended the Skills Show on Thursday and hailed the three-day event as a crucial date in the UK calendar to help bridge a ‘complex’ skills shortage which had arisen over the last five years.

Following the results he spoke with FE Week and congratulated the competitors and all involved.  “The Skills Show is the future of Britain. It is the competitors that make the show so special and important.

“I congratulate every one of the competitors and them every success, especially in their future jobs as examples of all that is best that skills can offer.”

Speaking after the medal presentation Dr Neil Bentley, CEO of WorldSkills UK, said: “It has been an incredible, inspiring and hugely successful Skills Show culminating in a ceremony to honour the very best young talent Britain has to offer. I would like to congratulate all the gold medal winners – indeed everyone who made it into the national finals.

“Over the three days of the event they have showcased their skills to tens of thousands of visitors from construction to engineering to hospitality and services. Sign up Saturday has seen 20,000 job and training opportunities up for grabs from the biggest businesses to the smallest.

“We are proud to have the support of so many companies in so many sectors and of the competition organisers which make The Skills Show the UK’s most innovative skills event. The medal winners will be rightly celebrated by their family, friends and colleagues but also by all of us – they are our future and role models to inspire the next generation of talent into fulfilling careers with skills at their heart.”

Part two of our wide-ranging interview with the new AoC boss David Hughes covers the new FE commissioner, area review value for money, and his thoughts on future of AoC – including how he will do things differently.

Richard Atkins starts this month as FE commissioner and is already getting stuck into area reviews. David hopes he can bring more transparency to the role. 

“Ministers change and the delays in the reports have just been bit unhelpful,” he tells me. “Hopefully they can speed that up, but more importantly I’d like Richard to talk about where he thinks that takes the sector, after the area reviews. 

There will always be a role for intervention from the commissioner

“There is a sense that with one bound, the sector will suddenly be sorted for the next 25 years and there will be no more problems and no colleges getting into financial difficulties. I think that’s very unrealistic; I used to be in a commissioner-type role in the LSC and SFA and there were always 15 to 20 colleges that were in difficulties. 

“That’s like any sector; some of the problem can be quality, or it can be leadership, governance, finance, or competition from schools and UTCs.”

However, he insists “there will always be a role for intervention from the commissioner”, but he wants him to “talk a bit about what he thinks that looks like going forward”. The AoC wants to know where the boundaries lie between the commissioner, the transaction unit, the EFA, and the SFA. 

So does he think the area review process been good value for money? On that subject, he’s ambivalent. 

“I think it’s been a process that’s engaged every college and didn’t need to in the depth it’s gone into,” he admits, but accepts it was a response to poor financials across the sector.

“In retrospect they should have been much more selective about the areas they looked at,” he continues. “There are some areas where actually you don’t even need five meetings, so why have them?”

He thinks the process has “definitely engaged more colleges in more work than it needed to”, but concedes that “some of that intervention” has been “absolutely critical”.

“We’ll see, probably in the next two to three years, whether it’s helped get the sector into a healthy financial shape.”

So what will David Hughes do differently now he’s on the throne at AoC? He’s pleased to be at the helm, and says his transition has been “really interesting”.

“There’s a lot of consistency in terms of what members are saying and what they want from their membership body, so that’s good news,” he tells me. “They want to be represented confidently, they want an organisation that stands up to government when it needs to and supports government when it can, and helps implementation go more smoothly influences at all of those levels.”

So will the regional structure survive? “It’s kind of simple and complex at the same time,” he says, acknowledging that they provide a “go-to person” on the local level – a service many members see as vital. 

What’s more, “I don’t want them to have to ring up London whenever they need to contact AoC”, if only because the personal relationships developed between regional officers and clients work “much better” because they know each other.

“Are nine regions the right answer?” he asks, rhetorically. “Various people will say yes, and various will say no.”

I press him on whether the nine regions will remain or get compressed. 

“I haven’t got that far,” he admits. 

“I definitely know that we need to have that local contact, and we need to have opportunities for principals, chairs and staff at different levels and roles to network, because that’s really powerful. 

“Whether the regions are the best way to do that, we’re still discussing. And it comes down to resource: what resources have we got from membership fees, and what do we think we can operationally support?

So what will the David Hughes AoC look like? Transparency, it seems, is the watchword once again.

“I think we do an enormous amount of good that members don’t see, so I’ve started talking about our priorities much more openly. I’ve started talking about the work we’re doing. I’ve started setting out what we’re trying to achieve. Apprenticeships are a good example. I think we should be saying – as AoC on behalf of colleges – ‘we think this is what a good apprenticeship looks like’ much more explicitly.”

Two FE Week journalists scooped the top further education prizes at the CIPR Education Journalism Awards 2016 at a ceremony in London last night.

Paul Offord, deputy editor of FE Week took home the award for Outstanding Further and Vocational Education Journalism, with senior reporter Alix Robertson claiming the runner-up prize.

Paul was rewarded for his exclusive investigation into brokers taking millions in government funding meant for front-line training, with judges commending him on demonstrating “the importance of good contacts” and “holding senior bodies to account”.

Alix took second place for her series of features into the Saudi Arabia colleges of excellence programme, which judges deemed “an arresting read, and a very powerful account of how asking challenging questions can result in the right thing being done.”

The pair were up against TES reporters Julia Belgutay and Stephen Exley, Kim Thomas from Public Finance magazine and Freddie Whittaker, political reporter at FE Week’s sister paper, FE Week.

FE Week’s Jude Burke and Billy Camden (reporter for both FE Week and FE Week) was also shortlisted for an award in the Most Promising Newcomer category.

Now in their twelfth year, the awards celebrate the best and brightest education and skills journalists for the academic year 2015/16, and attracted entrants from The Guardian, TES, Financial Times, ITV and BBC News.

John Dickens, chief reporter at FE Week’s sister paper FE Week also took a top accolade, winning first place in the Outstanding National Education Journalism category. Dickens beat off four other reporters who were also shortlisted: Jon Severs, Richard Vaughan, Helen Ward and Kaye Wiggins, all from the TES.

FE Week Editor Laura McInerney was shortlisted in the category for editorial excellence.

Editor of FE Week, Nick Linford, said: “Last night was well deserved recognition for our talented reporters as well as for both newspapers and all of the team.”

Managing director of Lsect, the publisher of FE Week and FE Week, Shane Mann, added: “Nick and I were proud and honoured to see our journalists’ hard work recognised and celebrated.

“So many guests at the awards were full of praise for both newspapers – these moments offer an opportunity to reflect and appreciate how much we’ve achieved in such a short space of time. In six years we have become the go-to place for news in the education and skills sector.”