Cardiff and Vale College leads the way with WorldSkills UK IT successes

Cardiff and Vale College recently hosted WorldSkills UK heats in IT and students came away with six medals – two of the winners will be going to Birmingham for the WorldSkills UK finals in November.

CAVC was the only Welsh college to enter students in the Cyber Security contest. Mateusz Kolacki won gold, while Kyle Woodward came away with the silver medal.

Morgan Whithear and Tomek Pawelek from Cardiff won gold and silver respectively in IT Technician. Melvin Saji won gold in Networking Systems Administrator while Fatoumata Makalo came away with the bronze medal in IT Software Solutions for Business.

Both Mateusz Kolacki and Kyle Woodward will now go on to the WorldSkills UK finals in November following their success in the Cyber Security finals.

“The competition was well done – I liked the idea of the Capture The Flag where we had to hack into different systems and look for tokens,” Mateusz said. “I had less than a month for any preparation and I had to go against an experienced competitor, but I’m glad I was able to be the first winner for CAVC and I’m looking forward to the UK finals.”

Kyle added: “This was the first year the competition was held, and it was well planned and executed. The point capture system was interesting and enjoyable.

“We had to do some intensive training to cover as much as possible in the little time we had. In the end I was pleasantly surprised when I won silver in the competition and am looking forward to challenging myself further at the UK finals in November.”

Cardiff and Vale College Deputy Principal Sharon James said: “Congratulations and a massive well done to Fatoumata, Kyle, Mateusz, Melvin, Morgan and Tomek who have all done a fantastic job in the WorldSkills UK IT heats. To have all six of them win medals – and two golds – is an incredible achievement and shows their hard work and determination has paid off.

“Staff in the Business and IT department at CAVC have worked tirelessly to train their competitors, enabling them to compete to such a high standard. This impressive haul of medals is testament to that.”