With an uncle who’s a mechanic, and hearing their dad and granddad talk about cars, sparked sisters Naomi and Abigail Parkes’ interest in the subject and they’re now in their second year of studying for their motor vehicle qualifications at college.
Naomi, aged 19, and Abigail, 18, are enrolled on the Level 2 diploma in light vehicle maintenance after completing a Level 1 motor vehicle diploma last year – and don’t have plans to stop there! Both want to go on to do the Level 3 qualification next year after which Naomi wants to do an apprenticeship and Abigail wants to go to university.
Naomi said: “We don’t want to stop after college – we want to continue learning to be the best in the field and want to become master technicians doing diagnostics and advising others on how to solve different problems.”
Abigail added: “When we go into the workshop each day we have to do a damage report on our vehicle to determine what the faults are and we’re building on the skills we learnt on the Level 1 course last year.
“Being the only girls in our class was daunting at first but the guys just treat is as part of the team now and coming to college together means we can support each other in the classroom and talk about what we’ve learnt when we’re at home.
The sisters said: “We’d say to anyone who thinks they can’t go into a male dominated industry to not be put off, and to keep focused on what you want to be in the future.”
Naomi and Abigail’s story has recently featured in the Express and Star newspaper as part of the ‘What it’s like to be…’ feature – read it here.
