On 11th and 12th of November 2021, Level 3 Computing learner Mircea Ionescu will be competing in the grand finals of the prestigious WorldSkills national competition!

WorldSkills UK is a biannual ‘skills olympics’ that supports young people by testing their ability to achieve world-class standards. This national event normally takes place in the Birmingham NEC, however this year the 64 different competition areas are being hosted separately at across the country.

Mircea is one of nine students across the country to have made it to the finals in Web Design, which will be hosted by Weston College at The Winter Gardens Pavilion in Weston-super-Mare.

We caught up with the Nailsea School alumni who added:

"I first heard about World Skills from my Website Development Lecturer in my first year, who encouraged me to take part in it.

"In order to get selected for the World Skills finals, I had to design a professional looking website during the qualification stage of the competition. Then during the semi-finals I had to complete the full front-end development of a website testing my skills in HTML and CSS production.

"I am very excited to have been chosen to compete in the World Skills finals, I also feel a great deal of pride in the recognition of the hard work of both my lecturers and I.  

"Weston College has played a very important role in my journey to the World Skills finals, all the skills I have learnt during my time here are being tested during this competition. My tutor, Jason Hill, has helped me to get ready for this with great coaching and competition preparation.

"I have learnt so much already during my time with the World Skills contest. I understand how to work under the pressure of time constraints better than ever and I have vastly expanded my knowledge of development languages such as PHP and Javascript."

This exciting news is just one of the fantastic career enhancing opportunities available at the college, through the newly launched Career Excellence Hubs. 

At the College each subject area forms its own specific Career Excellence Hub, endorsed by relevant sector employers which help to create a study programme with lots of career boosting benefits, WorldSkills competing opportunities is one of these.

Mircea will also be joined in the finals by University Centre Weston (UCW) student Jack Kimmins.

After finishing his Level 3 course, Mircea plans on staying with the team at Weston to study the BSc Applied Computing degree course at UCW.

The winners of all WorkdSkills competitions will be crowned at a ceremony hosted by TV presenter Steph McGovern from her Packed Lunch studio on Friday 26 November.

We'd like to wish Mircea the very best of luck! 

Click here to learn more about our Computing courses and Career Excellence hubs