Five TAFE NSW Orange students will take on some of the best young apprentices in the state at the WorldSkills national finals in Sydney this weekend.
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Kyle Borg (refrigeration), Harrison Gersbach (steel), Joel Simmons (electrical), David de Lange (fitting) and Jake Offner (welding) will join three other students from the Central West to tackle the country’s largest vocational education and excellence competition.
The main aim for the five Orange students will be to win gold and earn a place on the Australian Skillaroos team to compete at the WorldSkills international finals in Russia in 2019.
“I’m really keen to get to Sydney and give it a crack,” Mr Borg said.
“It’ll be a great learning experience, especially working in a high-pressure environment against some really talented competition.
Obviously we all want to do well and qualify for Russia. That would be an amazing experience.”
TAFE NSW teacher and WorldSkills site crew member Matthew Ware said the Orange students were well prepared for the competition at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Darling Harbour, and he expected them to perform well.
“These eight extremely skillful TAFE NSW Orange, Bathurst and Dubbo students have earned the right to compete at the state level after upstaging the best local talent at the regional WorldSkills competition in the Central West,” he said.
“The students have spent countless hours preparing for this competition, and derived great benefit from a weekend development camp in March where more than 300 TAFE NSW students converged in Orange and Bathurst for a two-day extensive training exercise.
“Having worked closely with the team, I’m confident the local competitors not only have the skills to do well in Sydney, but go on to achieve success at the international finals in Russia.”
The WorldSkills Australia 2018 National Championships will be held at ICC Sydney from June 2-4. For more information visit www.worldskills.org.au.