Perspectives on Tapping Technical Skills in India : Chris Jones, CITY & GUILDS

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December 1, 2009

chris jones
Director General,
CITY & GUILDS

Aiming to become a global benchmark for workplace skills and professional development, City & Guilds works to enable people and organisations to develop the skills they need for personal and economic growth.

Chris Jones shares his experience about providing solutions in professional development.

IndiaSkills will localise business processes to create qualifications and assessment systems designed to match the needs of India’s very specific regional and sectoral market requirements.

What are the objectives and the target audience of City & Guilds, in reference to the area of education and training? How are its applications being deployed in India?

City & Guilds works to enable people and organisations to develop the skills they need for personal and economic growth. Our aim is to become the global benchmark for workplace skills and professional development. We’re doing this by providing the highest quality assessment, learning and career support.

In India, we have joined forces with Manipal Education to open a new company called, IndiaSkills. This new company takes the best elements of its two like-minded parent companies to create a solution that will respond to India’s skills needs. At an affordable price, learners will be provided with a ‘fit for purpose qualification’ and a direct link to employment supported by flexible delivery and learner and tutor support.

City & Guilds have many training programmes running across worldwide. Can you give us details on the kind of courses run by your organisation, the duration of the courses, the fee structure and the scholarship schemes. How do you justify ‘training-on job’ scheme?

City & Guilds is the UK’s leading awarding body. We have 300 qualifications, across 21 industry sectors and we operate in 81 countries. Our range of qualifications are as varied as the people who take them. We’ve got the crowd pullers – engineering, health and social care, hairdressing, automotive maintenance and construction – all the way through to more niche career options like floristry. We design qualifications for everyone from beginners to people who run their own companies. The duration and fee structure depends largely on the country, the qualification and whether or not the qualification is ‘subsidised’ by the government.

IndiaSkills has developed its own products (qualifications) that are recognised in the Indian market and will be relevant to large employers in specified target sectors. Our fee structure ensures that vocational education is affordable and accessible to every level of society.

Is the content provided for the higher educational skill training, under various courses, standardised? At the same time is localisation of the subject matter given consideration while approaching different communities, in different states/ countries?

In most countries the benchmarks and standards are set by government skills councils, who liaise closely with industry. We then develop qualifications to match, or in some cases, improve on these standards. We strive to be the global benchmark for vocational education and we realize to achieve this ambition, you need to ensure your product is directly relevant to the local marketplace, which is why we have taken a joint venture approach in India.

City & Guilds in association with Manipal University recently launched ‘IndiaSkills’. What is the role that City & Guilds is to play in the given partnership? What is the basis for forming partnership with Manipal university?

The basis of the partnership is to create a business and qualifications recognised by employers in India with similar standards to City & Guilds’ existing framework. The joint venture has the aim of producing 500 centres and 1 million learners in 5 years.

City & Guilds will provide the curriculum for the content of the courses. Manipal will provide support on the ground to deliver the work-based training schemes, while leveraging its existing links with major employers in India to help ensure newly qualified students obtain employment.

The most important factor is that IndiaSkills will localise business processes to create qualifications and assessment systems designed to match the needs of India’s very specific regional and sectoral market requirements.

In practice this means that we will build on City & Guilds’ extensive range of qualifications but they will be completely redeveloped and localised, with the input of Indian industry experts and the input of major employers.

Are there other institutions with whom an alliance is being sought in India? Are there any alliances being sought with Government of India, from your behalf?

We are looking at many potential business partners and possibilities. Watch this space!

Does City & Guilds have tie-ups with industry players for the placement of the trained manpower? What is the nature of companies being sought for placement of the trained manpower?

Reputable training providers from across the country have been invited to become an IndiaSkills Vocational Training Centre. To ensure the highest quality teaching and assessment standards the centres will enter into an operating agreement to deliver training according to benchmarks laid down in conjunction with City & Guilds. The business model

Supporting and Fueling the Growth of ICT in Education : Rajeev Katyal, Microsoft

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December 1, 2009

Rajeev katyal
Director, Education, microsoft

Microsoft entered India in 1990 and since then has worked closely with the Indian government, IT industry, academia and local developer community for ushering in some of the early successes in the realm of IT.

Digital LEARNING, in conversation with Rajeev Katyal, learns more about the projects and programmes of Microsoft in India

Microsoft, along with NCERT, has now started developing lessons with the help of content developers so that at least one computer can be afforded for one classroom. In multi-point content development, the teacher draws the lessons plan and the content developers convert them into multi-point and give them back to the teachers. This is the concept of a content classroom.

What according to you are the challenges in IT education sector and the activities of Microsoft in that situation.?

Today ICT plays a major role in improving quality and aid the education system. Government has included ICT at schools by setting up IT labs and issuing PCs to the students. These ICT labs are eventually networked through broadband connections. The idea is to make all students IT skilled and to bring in pedagogy in the latest teaching learning processes through ICT.

In the higher education system, the National Mission is to ensure IT setups in each and every college with adequate broadband facilities. The expectation is supposed to be met in the next 3 years and followed by which the government plans to bring in content and virtual universities, virtual classrooms and web based content, and web based delivery of the content in the classrooms. Thus ICT based education improves quality in education and makes a young person skillfully employable. Actually ICT enables vocational content available through seamless access and delivery methods and spreads vocational skills that brings about employability in the process. Having specific programmes in ICT, Microsoft plays an important role in introducing and imparting technology in education, supporting the government initiatives in the process of improving quality and equity in the process of education.

How do you ensure ICT at school level as teaching assistance?

At school level, initiatives are taken more towards setting up ICT labs ensuring that both the teachers and students are getting the desired skills. Down the line the government wants to bring in learning of objects such as Mathematics and Science through ICT in terms of visualising and practice.

So in the coming years ICT will become an unavoidable part of pedagogy in teaching as well as in application of the curricula.

What is the role of Microsoft in the following three years to support government in their initiatives?

We train approximately 80,000 to 1,00,000 teachers every year in government schools in IT. Now these trained teachers will further teach the students in improving the quality of education at every stage. For the IT curriculum, anybody can get it through the Internet as a registered member with Microsoft and can download the files. The registered member also has rights to replicate it. The government schools can apply to us and get the rights to replicate paying the royalty of the curriculum.

In your programme, ‘Partners in Learning’, in association with the Government of Egypt, does the training take place in your area or school premises?

The training takes place in DIETs which are present in every district. DIETs are centres where teachers come for training. Here the teaching infrastructure is provided by the respective government and Microsoft provides the programmes of the course and train the teachers. The programme duration is generally of ten days.

What are the challenges in bringing ICT to schools?

Infrastructure problem is the main challenge that exists at the school level. For example broadband connection might not be available throughout the year and there is a psychological fear associated with the use of technology at the school level. Besides, the teacher’s training in IT is not up to the mark in many places.

To ensure quality in education Microsoft has introduced a feedback process from the teachers where post training they have to prepare lessons for their students and Microsoft scrutinises to meet the level of quality.

What is the way forward for you?

We firmly believe that the Microsoft offers the best of education in ICT across the world in terms of the sheer interactivity, popularity and its wider presence through the interface with the windows software. There is a very strong comfort level between the students and the teachers using Microsoft. We are now into introducing education inclined more towards technology.

Around 50% schools are computerised every year and the digital divide is going to be smaller. Other than accessibility, the challenge before us is to train teachers in IT and also at the same time provide computers in every school. Penetration of IT in school education is a big challenge facing the government as well as the private players in the field of education.

What are the initiatives that Microsoft has taken in collaboration with the government?

The bulk of the schools today in India are run by the government sector where bulk of the students come from economically challenged backgrounds. We tend to make an impact on the government. Out of 1.4 million schools in India, assuming that there are ten classrooms in each school, it is not possible to put computer in the hand of every child or even in each classroom. In such a situation multi-point technology can be of great use where 30 students can have 30 mikes using one computer.

The government is desirous of training more and more teachers because the requirement is much more than the number available. The target before us is of training 20 million teachers in 5 years.

What initiatives have Microsoft taken for the deprived sections of the society?

Microsoft has initiated ‘Project Jyoti’, which is about training students who live below the poverty line. In higher education also we are developing softwares for students at affordable prices so that they can work on projects. Our initiative, IT in academics is to make sure that a school or college can set up an IT academy where they can get access to 30-300 Microsoft courses which are certified.

Business Skills for Employment Solutions : Manoj Chawla, NIS Sparta

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December 1, 2009

Manoj Chawla
Executive Senior Vice President,
Employability Solutions Group,
NIS Sparta

NIS Sparta has been working in the sector of employability solutions for years now and offers a wide range of training solutions for different categories in business and employment sectors.

Manoj Chawla converses with digital Learning about growing opportunities in industry specific learning solutions.

Many people discover the need to re-skill themselves after having worked for a few years. We understand and cater to both individual needs and corporate needs, in the employment market.

Can you highlight the role of NIS Sparta in field of vocational education?

We started on 17th September, 1991 as a small division and by 2000 we were fully involved in training people, in both private and public sector. For the last 3-4 years our focus has been more on the career education sector. In the year 2009, we launched new programmes based on prior research with the industry. We noted that the students seek the industry-based jobs, need certain pre-skills before they join a particular industry. We launched new programmes keeping in mind what the industry needs.

Still more important is the need of persons who can deal with the customers effectively, that is people who can sell to customers, serve them in best possible manner, who have the right attitude, and who have the ability and desire to grow as leaders. This we knit into a programme of ‘Business Skills’. This particular programme is a hybrid version of instructor led methodology versus pure e-Learning method. Various modes of teaching and e-learning are embedded into the programme. We are working in the sector of employability solutions and we are looking into continuum of education for students who pass out of class 12, pass out of college and also those in the age group of 25-45 years, who are in their mid career. NIS Sparta has different training solutions for different categories.

Can you throw some light on ‘learning in an interactive virtual environment’ programme, that was launched by NIS in collaboration with the Xavier Institute of Management?

That was the first institute we partnered with. We launched three batches of Post Graduate Certificate in Business Management, that is, PGCBM. The admission requirement for the same is three years of work experience. When we look at the profile of people, the average work experience of the people who are applying for the programme is about ten years of work experience. This implies that people who are approaching us for admissions are more qualified in terms of experience than require for the course. This is also an indicator that majority of the people who are looking forward to upgradation of technical skills are in their mid 30s.

What are the main objectives of the programmes you run? Who is your specified target audience for the programme?

The objective when we started the above mentioned programme two years ago was to create a continuum of education. There was a need to address the needs of the working educated who may have missed in-depth class education, in a hurry to get a job. There are thousands of people who complete their education quickly and start working. They do not undertake further education at that point of time, because they do not feel the need. But, many people discover the need to re-skill themselves, after few years of working in an area. We understand and cater to both individual needs and corporate needs, respectively.

We do not classify people on the basis of a particular background they come from. Nor it is purely on economic background but the fact remains that people who are economically well off can afford what we are offering which is at the same time not very costly. The business season for admission in education really starts in the month of April or May, when results get declared lasting till August or so when they get admissions.

Has NIS Sparta entered in any other collaborations or Public Private Partnerships with organisations other than one mentioned above?

We have recently, announced our tie-up with one more institute that is with IMT Gaziabad. We will be launching a few programmes with them; whether it is Xavier Institute of Management or IMT Gaziabad, they will be operating on the same platform, that I,s video conferencing which has its own advantage over many other methods of education especially those which are e-Enabled.

Can you elaborate on the Karma Jyoti Scholarship and the USP of your programmes such as Dronacharya?

Few years ago we started re-focusing on the education business. As a result, we found that there are many people who want to join a programme at NIS, are deserving but were unable to do so because of the cost. Because of these issues, we launched karma Jyoti scholarship 2009. Its a merit scholarship. People who are interested will go through an interview, and based upon the performance in the interview and the written test they will be given a fee waiver. The corpus that we have created towards this scholarship is INR 3 crores and the process has already been activated.

Project Dronacharya, was a large scale project that we had executed in the past. We were given the task of coaching people on the field as against traditional training that happens in a classroom. Our consultant trained a person for two years and went out on field with him. This project lasted for almost three years.

Can you elaborate something on the community college initiative in this field?

We are amongst many people who have tied-up with IGNOU for this purpose. We have multiple colleges that we are looking at to set up across the country. This is unlike the other institutions who have tied-up with IGNOU. The curriculum that will be taught would be fairly standardised. However, being a community college the content also needs to be localised. It will be built around standardised and localised solution. Secondly, our focus will be on a lot of NIS components than the soft skills training. We have been heavily into softer skills ever since we started and our community college will be definitely teaching some hard skills because the community college will be at the local or state employment level. From the perspective of making the person more effective rather than only employable, our curriculum will be based on both effectiveness and employability.

Creating Technically Trained Resource Pool : Sharda Prasad, Ministry of Labour, India

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December 1, 2009

Views on Industry Based-Demand and Manpower Supply

Sharda Prasad
Director General,
Directorate General
Employment and Training,
Ministry of Labour and
Employment, Government of
India, New Delhi

The Directorate General of Employment & Training (DGE&T) in Ministry of Labour is the apex organisation for development and coordination at National level for programmes relating to Vocational Training.

In a brief conversation with digital Learning, Sharda Prasad expresses his high hopes on Industrial Training Institutes.

According to a survey conducted by the Boston Consulting Group and the US Censor Bureau, there will be a deficit of trained manpower in the country by 2020 by 46 mn and in that situation India will have a surplus of trained population by 47 mn. Therefore, we are training people in such a way so that they make it possible to work even out side the country, globally.

What are the major challenges and opportunities in the process of training labourers and employing manpower in the informal sectors of economy.

After independence, one of the basic objectives of the government was to industrialise the country and therefore, formed Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956. To trace the feedback from the industry about their requirements in trained technical manpower the Compulsory Notification of Vacancies, Act 1959 was also framed which made it mandatory for the industry to provide information about their requirement of technically trained manpower to the Employment Exchanges.

Besides, the entry at the moment of labour force in the market is around 12.8 million every year while our training capacity for the trained workforce is only about 3.1 million. Therefore, there is a huge gap of about 10 million per year. Therefore, the industry should come forward, feel free to participate and also sees a business opportunity in investing in the training process.

How has India adopted the concept of ITI, if at all?

In India the process was started by the government and the concept of ITI (Industrial Training Institute) was mooted along with the idea of employment exchange. Till 1968 there were about 850 ITIs and ITCs in the country. In the 2004 budget, the Finance Minister announced of upgrading of as many as 500 ITIs into the Centres of Excellence. And in that 100 will be upgraded from the domestic fund itself while the major 400 will have to have the world bank fund. The project was although launched in the year of 2004-05 but actually started taking a shape from 2005-06 initially with 100 ITIs.

Have all the proposed ITIs been converted into the centres of excellence?

Some parts of the plan is yet to be met in a year from now. It is a five years plan where the states also have to contribute at least 25 %. Around 22 new sectors were adopted in the new course that included hospitality, production, manufacturing, tourism, construction, leather technology, garments designing and textile manufacturing, etc. The training methodology was also modified to a two years course where the first year itself has six modules instead of one in the earlier to make the student a multi-skilled worker. In the second year during the first six months he gets a special training in one of those six modules he got inducted in the first year and in the next six months he gets a hardcore hands on industry training on that particular module he has been trained recently. After two years of the complete training he comes out as a multi-skilled worker ready to work as per the requirement of the industry. In the process, Industry Management Committee (IMC) was introduced which was headed by a member from the industry. IMC was made responsible to trace the requirement of the industry, getting involved in the training as well as the on-the-job training and apprenticeship of the student. There are 11 members in the committee where five are from the industry along with the Chairman, five from the state government and the Principal is the member secretary.

How the mission of National Skill Development Board has been taken forward to the rural population?

We are now in the process of setting up 1500 new ITIs and 50,000 Skill Development Centres through Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) process. These Skill Development Centres are actually the smaller versions of ITIs. Now these new 1500 ITIs will be at the un-serviced blocks at the rural areas, where a proper set up of education and training is not present adequately. The new 50,000 skill development centres will be distributed one in each of a cluster of 10 villages which will mainly train the local population that will help in the development of the local industry, market as well as the rural population of the country. The scheme is expected to launch by January 2010.

A large scale of the trained population goes out, what is your say on that?

Yes, a certain percentage goes out every year abroad. Till date as per record, around 6.5 lakh has already gone out. We also encourage people to take up jobs outside India. According to a survey conducted by the Boston Consulting Group and the US Censor Bureau, there will be a deficit of trained manpower in the country by 2020 by 46 mn and in that situation India will have a surplus of trained population by 47 mn. Therefore, we are training people in such a way so that they make it possible to work even out side the country, globally.

You have earlier talked about the formalisation and upgradation of the training centres towards more formal and organised sectors, could you please give us an idea of that.

We are in process to develop special councils for all the sectors headed by the industry experts of the relevant sector. National Skill Development Corporations have been given the responsibilities of setting up the sectoral expert councils with the help of the industry stalwarts. We also are planning to chalk out a guideline for strategic communication policies to publicise the excerpts of Government’s plans and performances in the sector. In the process all the government ITIs will also be upgraded overtime while the new ITIs and skill development centres will come up eventually. 500 institutes have already been covered in the domestic and world bank funded schemes and the rest will be covered in the PPP scheme of 3,550 crores in five years of time. We have already released a 1500 crores and 750 crores awaits for this year and the rest will be released in the next three years. According to our Prime Minister’s instructions we have to train 500 mn people by 2022 for the industry. We have estimated it around 40 mn per annum. Besides, 969 employment exchange branches will be modernised at a cost of 12 crores. Through the centres’ websites we will be able to take into account the requirement of the industry.

Students to be bonus marks if parents vote

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November 27, 2009

The Gurukul school has 180 students, and each of them will get two bonus marks in their oral exam in Civics subject if their parents vote. 'As of now, we have decided to provide bonus marks to students in Civics oral exam,' confirmed V N Abhyankar, in-charge of the Gurukul school which falls in the newly carved out Maval Lok Sabha constituency.

Terming it a small beginning, Abhyankar said the school would consider increasing the bonus to 10-15 marks. 'This will be decided soon. The move will surely motivate many parents to come out and vote,' he said. The idea, said Abhyankar, was to create awareness among parents about the importance of their vote. 'Marks are not important. It is just an attempt to drive home the point that casting their vote helps in getting the right candidate to represent us in Parliament. Creating awareness is key to voting,' said Shivraj Pimpude, assistant teacher at the Gurukul. He added that it is generally observed that 50 % of parents don't vote in the elections.

Jamia works towards sensitizing youth for elections

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November 27, 2009

The Photography Department of the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) will organize a week long event starting from this Friday named 'votography' for youth to create awareness about Parliamentary elections to be held from mid April. Imagery, street play, short film and multimedia installation will be used as a tool to awaken youth towards elections. 'We are planning to encourage youth to vote through this initiative, because youth comprises over 40 % of the voters in the country. The initiative will also present what the youth think of the polls,' said Farhat Basir Khan, a professor of Media and Communication at MCRC. Students will click pictures across the Capital capturing the election fever in the city. Street play will also be performed by students using icons and symbols showing how the youth have the power to change the scenario around them.

A short film in the community around Jamia posing questions to the common people, particularly the youth, on whether they will vote; if not, then why; their expectations from the elections and politicians will also be shoot by students. Multimedia installation comprising images and live videos as a culmination of all these activities will be put together by students.

First primary school in Africa having e-Learning facilities

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November 27, 2009

Kikambala Primary School in Kenya, has become a pioneer in ICT in Africa and a leader in e-Learning in the continent through the initiative of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).

The management of Sun N' Sand Beach Resort in Kikambala, took a shot at a Nepad e-Schools programme, targeting secondary schools. The 10-year Nepad flagship e-Schools initiative involves establishment of an Africa-wide satellite network that will connect the schools to the internet as well as to points within each country from which, educational content will be fed to the schools on a continuous basis. It also involves ICT training of teachers and students, content and curriculum development, community involvement and participation, and establishment of 'health points'.
Now Kikambala Primary School has become first primary school in Africa having e-Learning facilities that include a V-sat connection, 27 branded computers, a fully furnished room and a smart board that could be the envy of any institution offering computer lessons. The smart board acts like a blackboard which operates when touched. The Microsoft Consortium and Ministry of Education support the initiative launched on June 26, aiming at equipping learners, teachers and members of the local community with relevant computer skills. So far 51 people have been trained. Teachers are equally enthusiastic about the project. 2,058 students of the school will get benefited from the new facility.

Natural Heat to be tapped for more energy

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November 27, 2009

Efficient large-scale power generation from geothermal and other low-grade heat sources may now be viable, thanks to a revolutionary new technology. A team led by Behdad Moghtaderi, professor at the University of Newcastle Centre for Energy, worked with Granite Power Ltd (GPL) to develop the technology platform called Granex. It delivers higher efficiencies than conventional power plants and increases the quantum of power that can be generated from low-grade natural heat and industrial waste sources. A 100-kilowatt pilot plant set up at the varsity will enable a comprehensive power generation programme over a wide range of operating conditions.

Media Authority of Singapore signs pact with Singapore Centre for Chinese Language

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November 26, 2009

The Media Authority of Singapore (MDA) and the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) signed a pact to collaborate on Chinese language research and development. Inked at the official opening of the SCCL on Tuesday, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) aims to cooperate on researching innovative teaching and learning strategies of the Chinese language. It also includes a joint effort to launch a Call-for-Proposal (CFP) for the development of Chinese language learning and teaching. The CFP will focus primarily on three areas: oral training, mobile learning, and news in education. It aims to encourage local developers to develop techonology which can assess students of the Chinese language, to help diagnose their oral skills and improve their skills via various approaches.

Peer Digital communications play Role in Education practices

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November 26, 2009

Emergent, revolutionary technologies such as open, accessible, peer-to-peer and social media platforms have an influential role to play in how conventional education is both taught and learned, the World Innovation Summit for Education. An initiative of Qatar Foundation, WISE hosted a plenary session dedicated to Innovation, featuring a panel of world-leading experts. Addressing the Summit, Co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, spoke of how, as a very simple service of rudimentary communications, Twitter has become a real-time educational tool where users help and inform each other, citing earthquakes, fuel shortages and episodes of geo-political unrest as prime examples. Day three of the Summit concludes with a series of breakout sessions before a final closing session which will allow the international participants to deliver a declaration defining educational priorities for WISE.

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