Minister invites Paarl Campus student to Parliament

Ms Naledi Pandor, Minister of Higher Education and Training, invited Paarl Campus student Mihle Mvelakubi to Parliament earlier this year to attend her department’s Budget Vote in Parliament. He received the invitation on the basis of him being the 2017 national winner in the skills area of Bricklaying of the WSSA (World Skills South Africa) competition held at the Durban International Convention Centre in February of last year.

The WorldSkills Competition takes place every two years and is the largest vocational education and skills excellence event in the world that truly reflects global industry. The competitors represent the best of their peers and are selected from skills competitions in WorldSkills member countries and regions. They demonstrate technical abilities both individually and collectively to execute specific tasks for which they study and perform in their workplace, or training centres, including TVET colleges in South Africa.

One of the main legacies of the WorldSkills competitions is to afford visibility and importance to professional education and training, as one of the true tools of socioeconomic transformation. The WorldSkills International competitions can be equated with the Olympic competitions in sport excellence, where only the best of each country compete on a world stage.

As the national winner Mihle, who hails from Flagstaff in the Eastern Cape, was part of the WSSA team which competed in the WSI competition held in Abu Dhabi during August of 2017. The next WSI competition will be from 22 to 27 August 2018 in Kazan, Russia. Mihle is currently a NCV Level 4 Construction Engineering student at Paarl Campus. Boland College is extremely proud of Mihle’s achievement and wishes him all the success for the future.