Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs): Time for Stock Taking

 

The Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) are back in news with fresh announcements in the Union Bugget 2022. " Startups will be promoted to facilitate "Drone Shakti" through varied applications and for Drone-As-A-Service (DrAAS). In select ITIs, in all states, the required courses for skilling, will be started."

The ITI system ideally, needs to be flexible and nimble footed to adopt to the dynamic needs of the industry to supply skilled manpower in the normal course of functioning, rather then a push from the Union Budget.

These institutes (barring a few) are plagued with inefficiency due to shortage of staff specially the Principals (it is not uncommon to find one Principal managing several ITIs, in some cases hundreds of Kms apart), ill equipped trainers, outdated tools and equipment or even shortage of outdated equipment.

The silver lining is that at the top level there is willingness to change things for better, hence funds are being pumped regularly into the ITI system by the State Govts, Union Govt, Multi-lateral agencies like World Bank, Asian Development Bank and others. This ray of hope, however, does not resonate with the staff at the cutting edge ie the Principals and Trainers, who continue to believe "Yahan kuch nahi ho sakta" (No change is possible here). Something is amiss definitely. Is it the attitude!! or lack of motivation!! or a fractured alignment between the top leadership and the cutting edge staff!! lack of empowerment!! or a combination of all such factors!!

It may be important to put together a plan of action, both short term and long term, to address each of the above mentioned impediments. To be effective, it is imperative to run both short term and long term plan concurrently. 

The short term plan is essentially to engage local industry and industry association periodically to seek support in the following areas:

• Consolidate the database of relevant industry from multiple sources.
• Sign new MOUs, activate live ones and renew the expired MOUs.
• Training of Trainers by / with help of Industry.
• Invite industry to conduct / supervise final assessments of ITI trainees as per schedule.
• Industrial visits / attachments of both the Trainers and Trainees to understand the work culture and environment at the potential place of work.
• Feedback from industry on the trainees placed from the previous batches.
• Short Term Training support from Industry.
• Guest lectures by industry experts on relevant topics.
• Invite Industry to ITIs to:
• witness training
• participate in workshops on technical subjects
• placement drives
• utilise ITI infrastructure for upskilling / reskilling of existing employees.
• Create a strategy to communicate with the industry including redesign the CVs of the trainees to project competencies achieved rather than training done at the institute.
• Create a system of periodic surprise checks on progress of training as per schedule, upkeep of tools and equipment, training and training material records, trainees progress records of internal assessment and its communication to trainees, attendance records of trainers and trainees, availability of trainers for training vis a vis other duties. 

The long term plan could focus essentially on yearly activities like: 

Conduct yearly Labour Market Intelligence Survey (LMIS) on specific granular date impacting the training and placement of ITIs. The LMIS would have a focus on several areas not limited to the following:

• Economy and Labour Market scenario in the State.
• Investment plans of industry in various sectors across the State.
• Expansion of production capacity leading to demand of skilled manpower. 
• Introduction of new technology leading to upskilling of manpower / introduction of new trades in the ITIs.
• Phasing out of certain types of machines by industry leading to change in curriculum / re-kitting the training floor of the ITI.
• Identify (i) most common trades across the sub sectors and (ii) niche and critical trades across sub sectors.
• Adoption of new or modification of hiring practices impacting ITI placement rates (permanent / contractual / temporary/ apprentice trainees / casuals / campus placements / hiring through advertisements / word of mouth / references etc).
• Hiring preferences specific to gender and persons with special abilities.
• Employee benefits and going rates for the different ITI trades.
• Attrition rates / employee turnover and reasons thereof over the previous year's position.
• Number of workers on shop floor - job roles and category wise. 
• Expenditure on in house training of employees, specially on the ones hired from ITIs.
• Workshops with industry sub-sectors to review the trade wise curriculum and share consolidates recommendations with DGT (MSDE) for incorporating the changes in the curriculum / recommendations to close some trades / develop new trades as per industry demand. 
• Annual physical audit on the state of:
• tools and equipment to include availability as per authorisation and holding records and serviceability of all equipment.
• outstanding work orders for repair of equipment and tools.
• availability of manpower.
• state of books, training material and aids.
• purchase and utilisation records of consumables / training material.
• Set up a mechanism to upskill the ITI students from earlier batches to instil a sense of belonging.
• Institute a system of annual upskilling / reskilling programmes of the ITI staff, specially the Principals and Trainers.
• Institute a system of fair rewards and recognition for ITI staff.
• Develop a strong ITI wise alumni network and organise annual meet at the State level.
• Organise sub-sector wise annual Industry Skill Competitions for existing industry workers while engaging ITI students  as volunteers to organise and assist the competition along with the Trainers and Principals and other senior officials.
• Deploy a structured Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan at the State level.

The start point must obviously be to fill up all existing posts with competent people on priority. 

As they say "where there is a will there is a way" ......