Skill Vibes: Pause..Reflect..

T he Skilling Ecosystem continues to struggle to develop desired competencies for their trainers & trainees the lack of  which results in unreasonable failure rates and low placement percentages. The data made public by NSDC recently shows failure rates are more in the manufacturing sector as compared to the service sector job roles. Stakeholder at all levels are making positive contribution, however we still keep missing the goal by a big margin.  What are the possible reasons? There is no one specific reason but a host of them cutting across the "Skills Value Chain". Their combined effect keeps us away from the fundamental goal of enhancing Competencies. To discuss a few: a)  Setting up an ITI / Skill development center without linking it to the local and regional labour market survey, leading to a mismatch of demand and supply in the local area. Many times the focus is on choosing job roles with minimum investment disregarding the actual local requirements.  b...

T he ultimate beneficiary of the minimum wages is the workforce segmented into "unskilled, semi-skilled,  skilled and highly-skilled". Hence, ideally, the wage matrix must encourage the potential worker to up skill / re skill so be able to earn a higher wage to improve his / her quality of life.  Do minimum wages backed by the Code on Wages Act 2019, which has replaced the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; Payment of Wages Act, 1936; Payment of Bonus Act, 1965; and Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 really encourage skills development? Or there is a room for further improvement!! Just as a matter of interest, the minimum wages are calculated based on a complex matrix basis of a family of four members ie husband, wife, and two children below the age of 14 years. The husband is taken as 1 unit, wife as 0.8  and children as 0.6 each. Thus taking a family as 03 consumption units. There have been some suggestions lately to include parents also. The wage takes into account several parameters ...

I am writing this in continuation to my previous articles, viz; Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (1) and Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (2) in case you missed them earlier: Read on further…. Another learning from the past. The India Skills centre was approved to be setup on 28 Aug 2005 through a joint statement of the two heads of the States. The entire team was overjoyed imagining what it would be like. The team made several visits to Kabul in quick succession, essentially to establish liaison with the concerned people in the Afghanistan Government, visit the training centres set up by other countries like South Korea, Japan and Iraq, visit several construction sites to understand the live issues and skill needs. These visits gave us good perspective of what must be done and what should be avoided and why. The final go ahead from the Government was received after a detailed process of budgeting and re-budgeting and responding to queries of...

I n my previous story on the subject (Skill Development:   Lessons from Afghanistan (1), I had shared the challenge posed by the then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which took us Kabul to select the potential trainees for a focused short term multi-skilling capsule to be delivered in New Delhi. We now move ahead from March 2005 from Kabul to May 2005, New Delhi. The 25 Afghan trainees who were selected for a short multi-skilling capsule on use of power tools for construction related job roles arrived at New Delhi on the 5 th of May. They were well received and taken to the youth hostel in central Delhi which was set up to be their home for the next 15 days.   A lot of hard work had been put in between mid-March and 4 th of May to ensure meaningful training. All elements to make the training successful were falling in place: The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan confirmed the broad trades of Carpentry, Plumbing and Electrical Wiring. The Principa...

S kill development lessons from Afghanistan…Surprised!!! Yes. Afghanistan. I will take you through a journey in a series of articles covering one of the best skill development projects ever I have been through. Since the purpose is to share the lessons, I will use the names of the organisations and people involved restrictively. It certainly was a show of detailed coordination between the Governments and various organisations and leadership, courage, innovation and never say die attitude of the team members at all levels. As of now I roll back to the year 2005. The then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan along with his Cabinet Ministers came to India for a series of meetings in Feb 2005. The meetings besides the Govt of India were also facilitated by the Indian High Commission at Kabul. One of the apex Industry Associations was entrusted the task of making a presentation to the Afghan President and his team of Ministers on skilling the human resource for re-constructi...

A ssessments are the key to certifying competency. Contrary to a general belief that “Assessment” and taking a "Test” is similar, it is pertinent to mention that assessments are much broader.  A “Test” may check someone’s knowledge to ascertain / establish what the learner has learnt, or it may also establish the level of skill / knowledge acquired. Whereas, “Assessment” process documents skills, knowledge and attitude in a manner which can be measured. The aim of assessment is not to freeze the judgement but to open the window for improvements. The Assessments are governed by a set of principles which must be applied to make the assessments relevant. Just to recapitulate, the Assessment should be: ·          Valid ·          Reliable and Consistent ·          Transparent ·          Inclusive ·     ...

I t is always the learner first. If we keep this in mind, we are less likely to go wrong in making the appropriate policy decisions. One contagious issue bothering the Indian skills eco-system is the decision to induct Multiple Awarding Bodies in addition to the Sector Skill Councils to certify all the qualifications available in the National Qualification Register (NQR). There is no denying that competition is good for the system provided the desirable result is a better-quality assured certification. On the contrary, unhealthy competition can be counterproductive.   The basic / fundamental that must not be lost sight of is the fact that all awarding bodies must follow the same set of rules to design, develop, validate, approve, deliver, assess, certify and monitored the qualification. It is also a fundamental that must not be tempered with is that the Awarding Bodies must design “their” qualifications. The emphasis is on “their” qualifications and not on “borro...