Two students from Nescot College’s computing department have been shortlisted for the national finals of WorldSkills UK.

Elliot Becken, 18, from Epsom and Robert Simmons, 17, from Mitcham used their technical abilities to win a place in the UK finals of the computer programming competition.

Simon Bartley, chief executive of UK Skills, the body tasked with selecting and training Team UK, said: “This is a huge event involving about a thousand young people from more than 50 nations, competing over four days to complete their projects under intense time pressure Robert, who came to Nescot from Raynes Park High School and will compete in the Microsoft networking UK final at Northumberland College on June 18, said: “I didn’t go into it really seriously at the time, it just looked like a chance to do something different and learn something new. I was shocked to get the email telling me I had got through to the final – I’m taking it seriously now.”

Elliot, who competed in the Cisco ICT Networking event, agreed that moving up to the national finals had changed his view of the competition and his chances.

He added: “I am a bit daunted at the thought of all the scrutiny but we’re training hard for this with our tutors from nine to five. I’m just going to concentrate on doing my best for this event.”

The competitions are structured around the Cisco and Microsoft official curriculum for professionals working in the IT industry, so the standard required in the set tasks was of a much more exacting technical level than the boys had encountered in their current studies.

Elliot, who went to Blenheim School, said: “I’m interested in things. I always want to find out more and I really want to learn.”

Should the hard work pay off and they go through to the final stages, the boys will face months of intensive training before a play-off to get into the national team.

Nescot course tutor Kamadchisundaram Sureshkumar, pointed out that the two were very young to have got this far, He said: “We’re just going to go as far as we can. I have every confidence in their abilities and they are working very hard. Because of their ages, they can use this as a learning experience and go through again next year so there’s less pressure.”

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