The Foothills School Division board got to hear Wednesday just how important the Skills Canada competition can be.

A local parent who chaperoned a group of students to the provincial event in Edmonton, Corrine Babb says it gives students a great opportunity to see how things like welding carpentry and cooking can become a profession.

"To take the learning that you have in a school environment is excellent, but to actually place yourself in a competition, or to watch others in a competition is just so much what it's like in the real world," Babb says. "Even if you're competing with kids in your own class or your own school or your own district it's a way to bridge that experience with working in the real world and all the stresses and pressures, not that we want to impose that on kids but it's just something that gives them a real taste."

Corrine Babb speaking to Trustees with the Foothills School Division while students at Foothills Composite Skype in and take part

She says while the Foothills School Division has been very supportive in the past, she'd like to see students sent from each junior and senior high school go to next year's competition.

"There were schools there from little towns, Lloydminster, Chestemere, these are schools of our own size and they have this massive crowd of kids that were there competing as well as watching," she says. "These courses, when you fill that demand and feed that interest at the junior high level only goes on to increase attendance and popularity at the high school level."

She says for students who aren't in sports or band it gives them an opportunity to get involved with a team of people working together, to cheer them on and be recognized in their own school community.

She suggests a position be created through current staffing for someone who can arrange for the students to go to regional and provincial competitions.

Babb says it would also be great if they had clothing that identified them as coming from the Foothills School Division.