Photo: Swiss Skills (Pascal Barmettler, Automotive Mechatronics Technician EFZ)
The first 20 SwissSkills Champions have been announced. As planned, a third of this year's SwissSkills Championships 2020 took place remotely until last weekend. Another 40 Swiss championship titles will be awarded by the end of November. The 2021 championships will be held in Shanghai.
Young professionals from 19 different cantons won medals in this first part of this year's SwissSkills Championships. The championship titles went to the cantons of Bern (5), St. Gallen (4), Fribourg (3), Lucerne (2), Thurgau (2), Aargau, Basel-Landschaft, Vaud, and Valais (1 each).
Under normal circumstances, last week in Bern, the next generation of skilled workers would have competed in 75 different trades at the SwissSkills competition, in front of an expected 120,000 visitors. This major event, considered a unique showcase of Swiss vocational training, had to be postponed to 2022 due to the coronavirus crisis. Instead, in 60 trades, the respective professional associations, with the support of the SwissSkills Foundation, are holding the decentralized SwissSkills Championships 2020 throughout this autumn, thus still crowning their Swiss champions. The remaining championships, most of which are being held behind closed doors in training centers, will continue until the end of November.
The grand stage in front of tens of thousands of visitors at the SwissSkills in Bern was denied to the young professionals due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, with the decentralized SwissSkills Championships 2020, held throughout the autumn, the professional associations, with the support of SwissSkills, created a worthy alternative. "It's fantastic to see the great passion with which the participants in the SwissSkills Championships compete for the medals. They demonstrate the outstanding professionals that vocational training in Switzerland produces year after year," says Reto Wyss, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of SwissSkills.
Photo: Swiss Skills
In approximately 40 of the 60 trades, SwissSkills 2020 will serve as part of the selection process for WorldSkills 2021 in Shanghai (September 22-27, 2021). Professional associations have until December to nominate their representative for next year's WorldSkills competition to SwissSkills. The final composition of the SwissSkills team for WorldSkills in Shanghai will be announced afterward.
