JOB SHOW HELD IN NORTHERN CAPITAL
For three days, one of the ExpoForum pavilions turned into a plant shop, a confectionery company, a beauty salon, a primary school, a woodworking shop and a computer studio. There are four competitions for professional school and high school students: “Step Into Profession,” “Young Professionals,” and “JuniorSkills” within the WorldSkills Russia program in St. Petersburg, as well as “Abilimpics” = am olympiad of professional skills for people with disabilities.
The competitions were initiated by St. Petersburg City Committee for Education. To achieve the main goal of raising the prestige of working professions, it was decided to arrange a visual demonstration of 56 specialities that are taught in city colleges and vocational schools. The large pavilion housed more than 40 stands with different equipment and tools for each speciality.
After the welcome address by Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, about 460 participating students of secondary educational institutions received their creative tasks for all three days and went to the stands to compete for the title of the best in their profession.
The Culinary Arts stand was designed as a restaurant kitchen — with sinks, tables, cutting tools and mechanisms, and the Applied Aesthetics stand copied exactly the beautician’s office.
Most students competed for three days and had to present a finished product in the end. “At the Fabrics and Wood Art Painting stand, the participants make kerchiefs and decorative plates using sketches, it takes a lot of time”, the stand curator says. Some occupations had competitions in several stages. “Our student teams from teacher training colleges must prepare Russian language lesson fragments for the second grade, introducing a new topic. Then they present their results to volunteers from among elementary schoolchildren. Tomorrow there will be a new topic”, the curator of the Primary School Teacher stand explained.
The regional stage of the Abilimpics competition for children with disabilities takes place simultaneously with the main competition program. Judges in “Step into Profession” and “Young Professionals” events consists of experts from various enterprises and organizations from St. Petersburg and other regions of Russia, vocational trainers, teachers of special disciplines, heads of vocational education institutions.
The interactive exhibition is geared toward schoolchildren of different ages.
During the event more than 20,000 St. Petersburg students got to study various professions, participated in volunteering projects and received detailed information on what knowledge and skills people in particular professions had to have, and where you can get a degree in turning, baking, programming, wood processing and much more.
