The availability of good quality trainers is a significant challenge as India scales efforts to meet the national goal of skilling 500 million people by 2022, said the HRD Minister M. M. Pallam Raju.
He was speaking at the 2nd India Australia Skills Conference here on Friday.
“The Ministry of HRD has launched an ambitious programme under the national vocation education qualification framework of the AICTE to provide for skill development in schools in classes 9 to 12. After a pilot in Haryana, we have proposed to launch it in 19 States in the coming year. Given these developments, I hope we can come out with a sustainable model that would encourage Australian investment in India in this sector,” the Minister said.
A delegation of over 100 experts from Australia’s skills sector are in India to explore how they can partner to meet the country’s burgeoning demand for skills development.
Those visiting include representatives from Australia’s government-owned Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, private skills training providers, industry peak bodies, Industry Skills Councils, and Commonwealth and State/Territory governments.
Raju added, “Another area of collaboration with Australia that has emerged is that we can develop specific television programmes that could be aired on the direct-to-home channels. I have requested NSDC to help put this together.”
Dilip Chenoy, MD & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation, said, “The ministry has offered us one channel to have skill programmes. Whatever content we develop, we will put it on that channel. Australia too has a Skills One TV, which we are planning to bring here.”
The primary purpose of this engagement is to understand the great strides that Australia has made in the skills space, take their learnings and apply them in India, identify organisations in Australia that are interested in India, find suitable investment opportunities, and create a win-win for both countries.
Philip Bullock, Chair of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, said, “As India starts to scale up, what Australia brings to the table is experience in helping set up standards, framework and experience for delivering quality training. We will be working with the sector skills council to help them set up and also teacher training to help train the workforce.”
An initiative of the Australia India Education Council, the conference was hosted by the National Skills Development Corporation, Confederation of Indian Industry, Ministry of Human Resource Development and All India Council for Technical Education.