The Finnish government have taken seriously the findings from research seeking to understand excellent vocational performance in Finland. To that end, significant investment has been made to fund research projects, to Squad and Team Finland, and to the vocational education and training system more broadly. With increasing emphasis on skills competitions since 2005, participation rates of young people undertaking vocational education and training has moved from 40% to 60%. This paper presents data from the Finnish WSL 2011 team. The findings for the Finnish competitors showed that being stretched to learn more skills and comparing those skills to national and international standards was more important to the Finnish competitors than Team UK or Team Australia. The findings suggest that competing at WSC offers significant benefits to the next stage of the competitors' career.
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