New College Lanarkshire student will be flying the flag for Scotland at EuroSkills!
Nathanial Patrick is heading to Euroskills, Europe’s largest skills event, this Autumn, which is taking place in Poland for the first time.
Team UK – which heads to the EuroSkills Finals in the Polish city of Gdańsk from 5 - 9 September – will comprise of 20 elite apprentices and students.
Nathanial Patrick, 19, is currently studying for an HND in Cyber Security at New College Lanarkshire. and said the news was ‘totally unexpected’.
He said: “Even after I got the email I had to check with my lecturer because I didn’t believe it. I’m really looking forward to it and keen to take home a medal! I’m really grateful for the all the support I’ve received from the staff here at NCL and from Worldskills.”
Nathanial will be competing in the ICT Specialists (Team Skill) event and said his love of computers starting at his early age.
“I’ve been mucking about with computers since I was six years old! I just find them fascinating, they are becoming so intelligent now, the potential is enormous. At the national competition last year I was doing competitive IT, where you get given a client’s computer problem and have to solve it as fast as you can, which was really useful real world experience.”
His connection with NCL began at school when he visited as part of the North Lanarkshire Cyber schools imitative and he’s now looking at doing at continuing on to a Bachelor of Engineering Degree at College next year in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland.
Over 100,000 spectators from across Poland and Europe are expected to attend this year’s finals, after the event faced disruption in recent years due to the pandemic.
Also representing NCL in Gdansk with be lecturer Ryan Sheridan who will be one of Team GB’s training managers.
He said: “I am delighted to be representing the UK as Training Manager for Mechanical Engineering CAD at EuroSkills Gdańsk. As a former competitor and Gold Medalist at EuroSkills, I understand the huge opportunity in front of the competitors, as well as the hard work and dedication they will put in to prepare themselves for competing on a world stage. Good luck Team UK!”
Ben Blackledge, Interim Chief Executive, WorldSkills UK, which selects and trains Team UK to the highest international standard said: “The EuroSkills Finals provides a valuable mechanism for benchmarking the quality of skills. Through its competition-based assessment of young people’s skills against European industry standards, we can compare UK standards against those in the rest of Europe and importantly bring that international best practice back to the UK through the programmes we run at WorldSkills UK.
“This will be a life-enhancing opportunity for Nathanial and I wish them the best of luck. They and the rest of Team UK are the embodiment not only of the characteristics that we should aspire for in a young workforce, but for the UK Government’s ambitions for Global Britain too. "