Meet our WorldSkills UK Coach

Since becoming part of WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence last year, five tutors from across the RNN Group (Rotherham College, North Notts College and Dearne Valley College) were selected to become WorldSkills UK ambassadors.

This means that alongside their teaching commitments, they have been busy training with our WorldSkills UK Coach Frazer Minskip, with the aim of raising the quality of apprenticeships and technical training in the Colleges to international standards.

We caught up with Frazer to find out what they’ve been up to on the programme and what we can expect over the coming months.

What have you been working on with our tutors?

It’s been an absolute pleasure working with the five educators from RNN Group, they’re a testament to the Group and we’ve been striving forward at a great rate. They’ve been able to stretch themselves and it’s been a very exciting journey – they’ve come up with some great ideas for their professional development and how they can start to improve.

The hope for the programme is that not only do we increase the standard of learners and look to enter them into more national and international competitions, but that our ambassadors continually look to raise the standard of teaching by using our network to develop contacts and having access to competitions so they can see first-hand the international standard.

To widen the network is one of the things that will help take this programme to another level, where there’s a college network of people who have access to national and international experts within their industry.

We started our training sessions at the beginning of this year online and we’ve been looking at what is competency versus what is excellence and how we drive forward excellence. We’re also looking at how to deliver pressure testing and competitions. Incorporating competitions into day to day thinking helps to raise standards and change the way students learn in the classroom. This is part of how we move from competence to excellence.

The final module is all about improving the psychological mindsets of students, sharing knowledge on performance and growth mindsets and lean principles that we’ve learned through using sport psychologists and excellent people on our teams to help raise the standard of vocational learning, or how they can utilise their skills, day to day, and perform at a higher level for longer.

Tell us how the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence works

We offer unique global insights into how education and trade works around the world from country to country, and then share that best practice with colleges throughout the UK.

The aim is to incorporate this insight into the classroom to help raise teaching standards by training the five ambassadors so they can put what they learn into practice in the classroom, which will benefit the students and also so they can deliver what they’ve learned to other educators and within the college community and lead by example.

What do you enjoy about your role? 

I love that I get to work with people who are motivated, and are single-minded enough to want the same thing; to continually improve, and to go from competence to excellence in what they do day-to-day, it’s a really exciting thing to be part of.

What happens after training is complete?

Following the first section of the programme, we stay in touch with the educators to offer support where it’s needed. It could be that one of the ambassadors would like to run a growth mindset session and would like guidance on how to do that, or that someone has met an international expert through the programme and they’d like to bring them in to speak about their skills and expertise. We will support anything that will help raise the standard and help it be delivered throughout our network.

What can we expect to see over the coming months? 

Part of the programme focuses on how to deliver student pressure testing and competitions. By incorporating competitions into day to day thinking it helps to raise standards and change the way students learn in the classroom. This is part of how we move from competence to excellence and something the tutors have already started doing and now that the students are back in College the internal competitions will start to ramp up. I’ll be attending some competitions as a judge and I can’t wait to see how the students respond and the quality of work that they produce.