World Professional Skills Competitions as a Way of Professional Education Internationalization*

(cid:2) This article deals with the development of secondary vocational education and training (SVET) in the context of globalization processes. International cooperation is one of the priorities in the development of the SVET system. Constant updating of the educational content and technologies is necessitated by the professional qualiﬁ cation requirements and international standards. A promising area of professional education internationalization could be arrangement of international competitions and professional skills championships in the WorldSkills format. Far East State Transport University (FESTU) took part in organizing the WorldSkills BRICS Championship in the “Rail transport technologies” competence in 2022 and it is described in this paper. The professional skills competitions enhance the development of professional and expert communities, professional development of scientists, engineers, and workers in Russia and globally. Such competitions can become one of the main forms of vocational education internationalization, which will enhance and improve education quality overall.


INTRODUCTION
Vocational education internationalization is a key aspect of professional development in the era of globalization and knowledgeable society. Internationalized education is also recognized as a crucial means of achieving the goals and objectives of innovative vocational education in terms of its interaction with labour market, eff ective employability of graduates and the development of lifelong learning.
The process of educational internationalization assumes studying the relations between nations, peoples, cultures, institutions and even political systems [1].
For example, J. Knight analyzed the impact of globalization on diff erent countries. He argued that the globalization process depends on the specifi c historical development, traditions, culture, and priorities of nations, on the one hand, and on the other hand, higher education internationalization is one of the ways a country responds to globalization while maintaining the uniqueness of its own people [2].
In the current studies of Russian scholars, the concept of "education internationalization" is interpreted "as an integrative process of implementing international educational standards in the educational context of national universities" based on an active, competent, ethical and strategic approaches, thus contributing to improving education quality [3].
However, the internationalization process depends on the economic level of a country. While developed countries are focusing on personnel training to increase their competitiveness, other countries are creating human resource potential for developed economies resulting in a noticeable brain drain from these countries.
All these processes are refl ected in the transport universities activities in Russia. In the context of globalization, the world transport system has been increasing its importance in strengthening the produc-tion and business ties between territories, regions, and continents enhancing the development of the global economic space.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Nowadays, several local and governmental documents map out the internationalization process in transport education such as Federal Project No. 6 "The Development of Export Potential of Russian Education" dated 30.05.2017; Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030; the Interaction Programme between JSC "Russian Railways" and universities for the period up to 2025.
In this context, Russian transport universities have now accumulated considerable experience in international activities. All the transport universities have a great number of partner universities abroad and dozens of coordinated international education programmes (EP).
However, while universities have been succes sfully developing international cooperation, vocational education and training (VET) institutions and colleges have not participated in the internationalization process, which has had negative implications. The content and technologies of vocational secondary education have not been updated in line with international requirements for professional qualifi cation; the attractiveness of vocational education institutions to foreign applicants has been falling; vocational education programmes have not been included in the international education services market. Thus, Russia is missing out on both economic benefi ts and political opportunities to exert "soft" power internationally through the dissemination of the Russian language, Russian culture, values, and the achievements of Russian science.
The analysis confi rms that this is a general tendency for all institutions implementing vocational education programmes including FESTU.
The following issues have been identifi ed: • why leading universities actively implementing international programmes do not promote them in their branches and technical colleges; • how the accumulated experience of the leading universities can help develop international activities in their branches; • what forms of education internationalization programmes are appropriate; • to what extent SVET institutions want to develop international activities.

RESEARCH RESULTS
In the context of the issues mentioned above, attention needs to be drawn to such a form of education internationalization at the VET level as international professional skills championships. At present, the Autonomous non-profi t organization "Professional Skills Development Agency (Worldskills Russia)" that is the functional successor of the Union "Young Professionals (Worldskills Russia)" is working in this direction. However, given a diffi cult political situation in the world and the high demand in new formats of interaction, one cannot ignore cooperation within the BRICS college alliance (BRICS includes fi ve countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
At the XIII BRICS summit in September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed establishing a BRICS VET union and suggested organising international competitions for confi rming the professional competencies of future professionals.
The BRICS member states began hosting WorldSkills competitions in 2017. They are called WorldSkills BRICS competitions. The fi rst competition took place in China. Russia entered the competition in 2018. The World-Skills BRICS championship is aimed at identifying and developing potential talents and competences, building global network cooperation among partner countries in the fi eld of education and technology development. Its main goal is to train professionals for high-tech production in the context of the transforming economy.
The "Rail Transport Technology" competence was included in the WorldSkills competition in 2022, and students of technical schools, vocational colleges and railway colleges took part in it for the fi rst time. Far Eastern State Transport University functioned as the secretariat for the WorldSkills BRICS championship in Russia in the "Railway Transport Technology" competence. One hundred and fi fty two participants and 76 teams from BRICS countries took part in the international championship.

CONCLUSION
The WorldSkills BRICS competition in the competence of "Rail Transport Technology" has provided a unique opportunity for VET institutions to integrate into the international process. Participation in the WorldSkills BRICS competition has been a new experience, but there is every reason to believe that it will be a good start off for the implementation of other international projects. Professional skills competitions enhance the development of professional and expert communities, professional education including engineering and working professions and skills through promoting professional skills competitions in Russia and internationally. They can become one of the lea ding forms of internationalization of vocational education, thus signifi cantly improving its quality.