33 ITE, polytechnic students to represent S'pore at WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai
SINGAPORE – When competing in the water technology section at the WorldSkills Singapore challenge last year, Miss Raine Lim, 20, had trouble managing her time and had to settle for a silver medal. But she did not allow this to discourage her.
Instead, she practised hard for this year’s challenge and emerged as the gold medallist in the same section.
Miss Lim, from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, will be one of 33 students representing Singapore at the 46th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai next October.
The WorldSkills events test participants’ vocational skills.
Miss Lim told The Straits Times: “I’ve been interested in water technology and sustainability since secondary school, and going back to the competition was a chance for me to fix my mistakes and improve my performance.”
The Singapore challenge was jointly organised by SkillsFuture Singapore, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and the five polytechnics here.
It ran from Sept 29 to Oct 9 at ITE College Central and the polytechnics.
Individual gold medallists won $3,000, silver medallists won $2,000 and bronze medal winners received $1,000.
There were a total of 165 participants from ITE and the polytechnics competing across 18 sections, or skill areas.
On her way to winning in the water technology skill area, Miss Lim took part in six challenges over three days. These included water quality testing, as well as spotting and fixing errors in water systems.
Miss Lim graduated from NP last year and is now pursuing a degree in civil engineering at Nanyang Technological University.
This year’s competition featured events in three new skill areas – additive manufacturing, digital construction and mobile applications development.
The gold medal winner from the digital construction skill area is Mr Mohamad Izz Syafiq, a second-year ITE student.
“I still can’t believe I won. It was challenging and stressful and I had to learn required software just three days before the competition,” he said.
The 20-year-old, who is doing a Higher Nitec course in architectural technology, said one of the challenges was to design an aeroplane hangar within just a few hours.
He added that he is both excited and nervous about representing Singapore in Shanghai next year, and that he joined the competition to make himself and his school proud. “I wanted to show that ITE students can do just as well as any others, or even better,” he said.
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