Contest aims to promote skilled trades to Nova Scotia students

With registration open until March 4, students and apprentices across the province are invited to compete in a range of Skills Canada Nova Scotia-sponsored competitions

CITYnews halifax \ Steve Gow

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A competition aimed at providing local youth an opportunity in the world of skilled trades and technology is now open for registration.

Hosted annually in the spring, the Nova Scotia Skills Competition unites students and apprentices to compete for the provincial honours of being the best in their particular skilled trade or technology field.

“We’ve been offering the Nova Scotia Skills Competition for over 20 years,” says Courtney Gouthro, executive director for Skills Canada Nova Scotia, the organization behind the competition. “I guess we did have a little bit of a hiatus during COVID but we are back in action for 2022 and really excited to be delivering over 30 different competitions this spring.”

Offered to both high school and post-secondary level students, each of the competitions are tailored to a particular skilled trade or industry with challenges designed to uncover excellence in certain industries.

Divided into two separate criteria fields, students in junior high or high school are given different challenges than those at the post-secondary level.

“Those competition areas include some skilled trades, like cooking and baking and carpentry and welding,” says Gouthro about the secondary education level competitions. “But we also offer employability skill competitions at the high school level, so workplace safety and job search, public speaking, and those kind of skills that are just extremely transferable and really needed.”

In the post-secondary education section, the range of competitions is even greater with challenges in everything from welding and machining, to graphic design and IT software solutions, as well as hair styling and aesthetics.

“If you have seen Masterchef or one of those cooking competitions on TV — it’s sort of a similar format,” explains Gouthro of how the Nova Scotia Skills Competition works. “Each competitor is given a project and a time period that they have to complete it within — it tends to be a six hour window of time (and) at the end of the day, for each contest area, the top three competitors are awarded bronze, silver and gold medals.”

She adds most gold medallists then advance to compete in the Skills Canada National Competition as part of Team Nova Scotia near the end of May.

Due to uncertainly surrounding the province’s pandemic restrictions, organizers were forced to spread the various contests over a few weeks rather than hold a large event. As such, some competitions will begin as early as next week and “they are continuing all the way through until the end of April,” adds Gouthro.

In the meantime, online registration for the Nova Scotia Skills Competition closes at 4 p.m. on March 4.

As for the Skills Canada National Competition, it will be held as a hybrid event on May 24 with in-person events taking place in British Columbia.

“The secondary level — the high school competitors — will be staying in Halifax and competing virtually, and I will be taking a team of post-secondary competitors across the country to Vancouver to compete in person,” adds Gouthro.

Normally an in-person event that draws an audience, the Nova Scotia Skills Competition will unfortunately not be open to spectators this year.

“We also would host school tours where kids could come in and get to see all the competitions in action and then we would have a ton of hands-on activities,” laments Gouthro. “We really are huge advocates for the idea of having applied learning opportunities for students. It’s one thing to see 20 different careers in action, but I think it really helps you to understand what you like and what you don’t like if you have an opportunity to try it.”

In the absence of the live event, Skills Canada Nova Scotia will be introducing a “Try a Trade Take Out” program that hopes to engage secondary students in the program. As such, teachers will be provided a kit of materials, supplies, manuals and a demonstration video as a way to allow students to turn their classrooms into workshops.

“Students get to complete an activity in their classroom to learn about a different skilled trade or technology,” says Gouthro of the new initiative. “We are always doing different stuff here!”

For more information on the Nova Scotia Skills Competition, visit the Skills Canada Nova Scotia website.