Are your skills up to the job?

The six Key Skills are the basic building blocks in Service education so it was good to see three teams - one from each of the Armed Forces - taking part in the Key Skills Competition at last year's SkillCity Exhibition in the Manchester Quays.

Each team had to use all of the following skills in their presentation:
• effective communication
• application of number
• information technology
• problem-solving
• improving own learning
• working with others.

'No problem there then', you might think. Wrong. It is one thing to use all these skills in daily life, but quite another to show an audience how they are part and parcel of your employment in a half-hour time slot, after just 90 minutes to prepare. Add to that restrictions over the props allowed, a noisy show around you, and lost visitors staggering through an audience that cannot tell the difference between the Forces and TV drama, and you are showing courage of a high order simply to climb on to the stage.

First up was a Royal Navy team of trainee marine engineers from HMS Sultan. All had spent at least 18 months in the Service including a year at sea, and were in the middle of another two and a half years of artificer training before joining the Fleet with an HND as Leading Hands. The two assessors sat with sheets on folders and pens in hand as the first slide appeared.

The presentation was about teamworking in emergencies, and concentrated on fire-fighting on board a stricken ship. The focus of the emergency was a hatchway (cardboard box) with a blaze (red and yellow balloons) below. As it was early in the exhibition's day the audience was a little thin and the sound system needed some work.

After some explanation of the drills and duties involved, likening the ship's emergency organisation to Manchester United, which went down very well, a member of the audience was selected to try on a fire-fighting outfit. The young boy elected was not a pretty sight as he disappeared into the heavy brown sack-like costume on-stage. Within the obvious restrictions of a temporary auditorium in a city centre, the demonstration showed the training and teamwork that was necessary to deal with emergencies in situations where the only help readily available was from the crew's own resources.

Next came an RAF team of five airframe mechanic students from RAF Cosford. They delivered the 'Potted Harry Potter', complete with broomsticks, quidditch and three-headed dogs. (Don't ask!) Showing no lack of imagination and enthusiasm, but an occasional forgetfulness of lines, the actors were led by a young Eric Morecambe look-alike in the title role.

They are in the middle of a 14-month course taking them 80 per cent of the way to a National Certificate and the presentation was a joint effort between them and their instructors. Handing out sweets to the watching children was a definite crowd-pleaser, while their courage in inviting their own commanding officer to see his reflection in a magic mirror was surely in the best traditions of the Service.

Then it was the Army's turn, with a more traditional form of presentation. Two Corporals and two Craftsmen from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers' School of Aeronautical and Electronic Engineering at Arborfield outlined the benefits of a REME career in glowing terms. Financial incentives to the fore, the technocrats explained such new concepts as sports afternoons to a generation obviously unused to physical exercise.

From basic training to degree, the possibilities were clearly explained in a proper military manner. It was probably the slickest presentation that most members of the audience had seen outside party political broadcasts, and seemed to be talking about a world that was light years away from their common experience.

As ever each single Service produced a radically different solution. Each was impressive and, together, they showed ability and imagination. Readers may wish to know that all this took place in the middle of exhibitions of building and butchery, wannabe pop stars and police, football and physiotherapy, with onlookers varying from the highly intellectual to the barely upright.

But there had to be a winner and, after congratulations and presentations all round, this was a triumph for the RN marine engineering artificer trainees from HMS Sultan. As an entry it balanced presentation with demonstrations and one or two theatrical moments. However, all the military contributions showed key skills in operation and no one could have been left doubting the Services' commitment to training.