In Indien zeigten Arbeitgeber bis Mitte der 2000er Jahre kaum Interesse an einer Ausbildung von Fachkräften im eigenen Unternehmen, geschweige außerhalb ihrer Unternehmen. Doch das rapide wirtschaftliche Wachstum des Landes führte zu einem erheblichen Mangel an qualifiziertem Personal. Die Regierung von Indien reagierte. Aber ein bestehendes System ändert sich nicht über Nacht.
The Private Sector's Commitment to the National Skill Development Programme is Shaky
In India until the middle of the 2000's, employers were hardly interested in
training within their own enterprises, let alone the system outside their
enterprises.
However, rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth during
those years led to a serious shortage of skilled staff. The government of India
began to respond. For the first time in the history of India the 11th Five Year
Plan (2007 to 2012) included a chapter on skill development, as did the 12th
Plan. But the government-and-supply-driven system was not going to change
overnight.
The private sector has remained resistant to contributing
significantly to skill development, unless they are receiving funding from
government. The number of private industrial training institutes (ITIs) did grow
from under 2,000 in 2007 to 10,000 in 2014, but the Ministry of Labour – which
was responsible for them – did not have the capacity to regulate them. Nor does
the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MOSD) have the capacity
to regulate for quality of training.
The government did create a
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in 2010. But the so-called
public-private partnership that NSDC was intended to be (with 49 per
cent shares being contributed by the government of India, and 51 per
cent shareholding from ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce of India),
CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) and FICCI (Federation of Indian
Chambers of Commerce and Industry) fizzled out early.
NSDC has remained
almost entirely government-funded. There might have been rapid growth of
NSDC-funded vocational training private providers (VTPs), but these VTPs offer,
at best, courses that last four months (maximum length), which is hardly
sufficient to equip fresh youngsters with skills that can make them
employable.
Government and supply-driven systems of technical and
vocational education and training (TVET) tend to fail, while demand and
employer-driven systems are more likely to succeed. For half a century after
independence, India hardly had a skill development (SD) system in place.
Vocational education was practically non-existent until the mid 1980s at school
level.
The ITIs that came into existence in early 1960's hardly grew in
number until 2007 and there were barely 250,000 odd apprentices in the formal
economy. Only two per cent of the workforce had received formal
vocational training by 2004-5. The formal TVET system was heavily driven by the
government.
Barely 16 per cent of Indian companies were providing
enterprise-based training in 2007 according to World Bank data. Indian companies
had been free riders on the education system. The shortage of skilled personnel
has raised input costs for them, so that more of them are now providing in firm
training (36 per cent in 2014). However this is mainly confined to the
larger firms that can afford to invest in the infrastructure and trained human
resources required to provide such training. The smaller and medium enterprises
are still struggling without skills.
Given the limited progress since
2007, the number needing TVET is, we have estimated, at least 20 million per
year, but the system is barely churning out five million per year. The number to
be trained is nowhere as high as the previous government policy believed (500
million between 2012 and 2022, as stated in the National Skills Policy 2009).
Nor is the number even as high as 400 million (by 2025), as the current
government has stated in the National Skills Policy, 2015. Nor is the number
joining the labour force (for whom employment has to be found) anywhere close to
the 12 million per annum that is repeated ad nauseum by policy-makers, industry
and the media; it is no more than seven million per annum.
But the
challenge is stupendous in any case. Without employer involvement the target can
never be met. But involvement has to go well beyond the adoption of ITIs by CII
and FICCI. It has to take many other forms and very urgently.
First,
secondary schools, ITIs and private Vocational Training Providers (VTPs) cannot
expand capacity because they are short of industry-ready teachers/trainers.
The MOSD is planning to take on retirees from industry and retired army
personnel as trainers – a good first move but it has to go well beyond this
action.
Industry help must also reach the 21 central government
ministries offering vocational training which also need trainers. In addition,
about 2,992 secondary schools were approved (by March 2016) to offer vocational
courses from class nine in government and CBSE (Central Board of Secondary
Education) schools in the last two years, who also need instructors, as do the
ITIs and polytechnics.
Industry and employers have to offer their staff
as instructors to all of them. However such instructors have to receive
pedagogical training possible in the National Institutes of Technical Teacher
Training and Research (NITTTRs).
A second reason for poor quality TVET
is that trainees receive almost no practical training. No wonder industries
complain that trainees have to be trained all over again. Sector Skills
Councils (SSCs, incubated by the National Skill Development Corporation), CII
and FICCI have to offer to arrange this practical training for schools, ITIs and
polytechnic. This should be a part of the deliverables of SSCs and industry
associations, which chambers of industry should encourage.
A third
reason the poor quality of training is that youth graduating from vocational
schools, ITIs or polytechnics have no understanding of a work environment. They
have never experienced an internship while in the TVET system. Employers need to
arrange internships through the SSCs, CII, Assocham and FICCI. This is also not
part of the deliverables of SSCs or industry associations, which also chambers
should encourage.
Fourthly, to ensure competency-based training, SSCs
are currently responsible for preparing National Occupation Standards (NOS),
which are a requirement of the National Skills Qualification Framework, but a
NOS is not a curriculum. This requires a competency-based industry-ready
curriculum. Employers need to get involved in the preparation of such
curriculum.
The Central Institute of Vocational Education of NCERT
(National Council of Educational Research and Training) in Bhopal is trying hard
with limited staff to prepare the curriculum for secondary schools but it needs
help from industry.
Similar help is needed by NITTTRs (National
Institute of Technical Teacher Training and Research) for polytechnics and the
Advanced Training Institutes for ITIs. But this is also currently not part of
the deliverables of SSCs and of industry associations.
Finally, industry
needs to get directly involved in the assessment of trainees and students of
vocational education, which should be a deliverable for SSCs and industry
associations, which industry chambers should facilitate on a much larger scale
than currently happening. But assessors themselves must be trained to be
assessors, by industry and educators.
India cannot duplicate the dual
educational system of Germany (which is a reason that Germany is a manufacturing
giant), but we should certainly replicate the duality principle. This principle
theory plus practical training underlies the skill development systems in
countries that have demonstrated success.
None of the 21 line
ministries of the central government that fund training will produce
industry-ready trainees without these five principles being adopted by industry
and employers – in other words by ASSOCHAM, FICCI and CII, who were supposed to
be co-financiers of the NSDC supported SSCs in the original scheme of
things.
(This article has not been edited by skillreporter.com and has
been copied from an e-news portal.)