April 5 2016, 17.17 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
Bangalore, April 5, 2016: In the quest to align to skill standards which are recognised globally, Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) along with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and UK- India Education and Research Initiatives (UKIERI) today announced the launch of “Transnational Skill Standards” in India. These standards in skill development are benchmarked to United Kingdom across 82 identified job roles.
The event saw signings of Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) that will enable sharing of best practice, staff exchange, and development of new models to increase employer engagement and investment in skills.
Commenting on the partnership, Shri Rudy said, “Standardisation of vocational education is crucial in bringing about a level in the efficiency of the skilled workforce. It is our endeavour that we benchmark the standards so as to support international mobility of Indian workforce and also prepare them to work in International Companies establishing their operations in the country.”
“We have chosen UK standards to benchmark our Indian Skill standards since all the GCC countries recognise their skill certification,” he further added.
Gracing the occasion was also the British High Commissioner India, Sir Dominic Asquith KCMG who said, “India and UK have been collaborating on skill development since a long time now and this is yet another effort to bring more quality in vocational education which will open more avenues for employment across countries for the youth.”
Early in January 2016, Indian & UK sector skill councils met to decide on the methodology to undertaking this unique initiative. A common set of project documentation was created by the National Skill Development Corporation and Federation of Industry Skills & Standards and the Sector Skill Councils partners were allowed to develop their own approach to the task.
Representatives of the Sector Skill Councils of both the nations worked together over a span of 3 months from January 2016 for mapping and benchmarking of the identified job roles. The teams have worked tirelessly to prepare the documents and validate the final output.
Today we are proud to announce that 15 Indian SSC have benchmarked 82 Job Roles (details mentioned in the annexure) with 11 SSCs of UK and prepared Transnational Standards (Indian Standards benchmarked to the UK Standards).
The Transnational Standards highlight the gaps between Indian Standards against the UK standards and provide a workable document to create bridge courses on the identified gaps between the standards of the two countries.
Some of the other emerging partnerships in this arena are:
· In order to operationalize the next phase of the partnership, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship through National Skill Development Corporation is pleased to tie up with Association of Colleges – United Kingdom a body representing Further Education (FE) Colleges to setup Skill Academies of Excellences in the identified sectors in India.
· FE Colleges will be partnering with Indian Training Organizations to setup the Skill Academies to deliver trainings on the Transnational Standards identified through this partnership.
· On this occasion, we are also partnering with UK Awarding Bodies, such as City Guilds and Pearson, responsible for providing certification on UK Standards.
The key highlight of this partnership is recognition of Indian SSC Assessment and Certification by the UK Awarding bodies. Those interested to migrate will simply have to take “bridge training” on the gap identified in the benchmarking process and get assessed on the components of the “bridge training”. Thus just by doing “bridge training” and getting assessed and certified on it, will lead to award of UK IVQ which has a global acceptance including GCC countries.
The Indian Sector Skill Councils which participated in the project were: Automotive, Agriculture, Life Sciences, Healthcare, Capital Goods, Apparel, Textiles, Beauty and Wellness, Telecom, Hospitality, IT & ITeS, Construction, Retail, Electronics and Security.
Indian SSCs were mapped to following UK SSCs who participated - LANTRA (Agriculture), IMI (Automotive), Habia (Beauty and Wellness), SEMTA (Capital Goods), Summit Skills (Construction and Electronics), People 1st (Retail and Tourism & Hospitality), Skills for Security (Security), Creative Skill Set (Apparel and Textiles), Tech Partnership (IT and Telecom), Cogent (Life Sciences) and Skills for Health (Healthcare)
The event also saw a couple of Employers from GCC countries who committed employment to Indian workforce certified on these benchmarked standards. This overall initiative aims to support two major initiatives of the Government of India i.e. “Make in India” and “Skill India”.
