Yesterday I had the pleasure of traveling to Seinajoki to visit the Skills Finland 2016 competition. This event draws over 40,000 people to one place in Finland each year so that students can compete in their vocational qualifications. It was such a cool event and I left even more enthralled with and excited about the vocational education system.
In Finland, about 50% of high school students choose to go to vocational schools. As I've written before, this is a choice the students make, not a track they are forced into by a test or their grades. However, as I was interested in finding the special education students at the upper secondary level I quickly realized that I would find the majority of them in vocational schools. Vocational schools offer an extremely wide range of qualifications in Finland and some fields are even more difficult to enter than some of the more competitive general high schools. Traditional vocational fields like carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, hairdressing, beauty care and welding are offered in many schools in Finland. But other fields like circus arts, animal husbandry, handicrafts, horse care, and forestry are found at only a few different schools. The number of careers that are considered vocational is pretty astounding and every time I visit a new school I find out about a new vocational study area.
Yesterday was a chance for the best students in their fields to show off their skills. This national competition brings together students from all over Finland to demonstrate their competencies and then the winners in many categories are eligible to then compete in a European Skills competition. Finland's competition seems to be the largest and most comprehensive (as their vocational system is also the star of the European Union's vocational programming).
While I could write all about what I saw, the pictures will tell a much better story about the incredible talents, wide range of skills and enthusiasm for vocational fields I saw. The competition takes over the entire town and competitions were held in a variety of different arenas. I walked all over Seinajoki to check it all out and below are some of the shots from the day.
Here several mannequin heads await their beauty treatment. A few hours later when I returned they all had their hair done in a variety of styles. To the right are two examples of the hairstyles that were being judged.
This young lady is waxing the legs of the woman lying down. Yes, there is a competition for waxing in Finland! Waxing!! There were two other women being waxed in the same area and it was clear that they weren't stopping at just her legs. I also saw them waxing their faces and armpits. Let's hope that's all they did and stopped there! These students were in the beauty care field.
This young woman is cleaning and preparing the shelves that she will then load with the products on her cart. She probably studies in the business sector in sales. Each competitor was given different products to display and you can see the man in the background in the picture on the left is judging her performance.
In the morning I saw several young men and women working in this area laying down the curb in the picture above. When I returned a few hours later they had all made excellent progress in making a complete patio. No one was done yet, but it was clear they had put in a lot of work all day and still had more to go.
I stopped by to meet the pigs, goats and cows for the animal husbandry competition. I'm not sure what skills the students would have to demonstrate, but these cute little guys were playing in the hay in the morning. Don't get too attached to those pigs...they are going to the slaughterhouse on Thursday morning!
Above are the chefs that are learning to work in restaurants. Catering is a different qualification and their competition was held in an area that looked more like an industrial kitchen. These young men and women were preparing dishes for the panel of judges you can see sitting above testing, critiquing and grading the different meals they were served.
Restaurant service is a popular field in Finland. These young women had to demonstrate their skills in creating the different types of napkin origami and properly setting the tables. Perhaps later they also had to serve the judges and demonstrate their interpersonal skills.
This team of students works in the health care sector. They were talking with an older lady and seemed to be explaining something about her health to her. The girls wore microphones so that everyone could hear them as they spoke to their client. The two women to the left are judging and scoring their performance with their client.
The student in this vehicle is demonstrating his skills in forestry. He had to show that he could remove the logs from the cart and place them in specific places on the field, to both the left and the right of the machine, horizontally and vertically. Forestry is one of Finland's main industries (the country is 80% forest and the wood is most often used for making paper) so this field is very important to the economy.
These two girls are working on fashion design. They had lots of fabric and a sewing machine at their disposal. I believe all the students were making skirts but I'm not quite sure.
This young woman is showing off her skills in horse grooming. Horseback riding instructor is another field. Many young girls I have met in Finland enjoy riding and participate in this sport.
There were many students working in all different fields of construction and things that are important to building a house. I don't know the first thing about any of these fields so I was extremely impressed with the work these teenagers were doing. The boy to the left is creating a tile mosaic that matches the picture in the upper right hand corner of the photo so he had to cut the tiles to get the correct pieces and then had to position them correctly on to the wall. It was really cool to see how focused all these students were while adults walked around with clipboards assessing their progress and work.
Needless to say, Skills Finland was a completely worthwhile trip. There were so many more competitions and I have only posted pictures of a few of the hard working students I saw. The competition lasts three days and there are also categories for students with special needs. The event draws thousands to watch the kids at work and for some students it could even lead to being recruited for a specific job by some of the companies that sponsor the event. I was also able to participate in a seminar with about 200 other educators to learn about how Finland excels in vocational education, how they got there and where they are going. There were people from all over Europe and the world there, but I was the only American in the room. America can learn a lot from the European vocational system and perhaps when I return this will be something I push more and the direction my career will lead. Who knows? Next week I will be visiting two more vocational schools in two different cities in Finland. More adventures ahead!