Press release from Business Wire India
Source: FICCI
Monday, September 19, 2011 03:15 PM IST (09:45 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest, People; Business: Business services, Education & training, Media & entertainment
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FICCI-E&Y Paper Calls for Focus on Improving Quality, Building a brand and Spreading Awareness, enhancing accessibility and Increasing Affordability
New Delhi, Delhi, India, Monday, September 19, 2011 -- (Business Wire India) -- -- MNCs find only 25% of India's professionals employable
-- School dropout rate as high at 57%
-- Employers face huge difficulty in filling skilled job vacancies
For a robust and quality vocational and training framework.
Even as India's young and large population is being touted a huge demographic dividend, the country is saddled 98 per cent of its work force lacking in skills to enable them to get jobs.
The facts are chilling: Over 40 million people are registered in employment exchanges but only 0.2 million get jobs annually; approximately 80 per cent of the workforce in rural and urban India does not possess any identifiable marketable skills; the 'school dropout rate', is as high as 56.8 per cent by the time students reach the qualifying examination at the 10th standard; only 25 per cent of the country's professionals are considered employable by multinationals and the difficulty of employers in India to fill job vacancies has increased to 67 per cent in 2011 compared with 16 per cent in the previous year.
These portents have been sounded out by a FICCI-Ernst & Young Paper on 'Strategic and implementation framework for skill development in India' which was released here today at the 4th Global Skills Summit 2011, organized by FICCI and the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment.
The paper notes that more than 75 per cent of the new job opportunities to be created in India will be 'skill-based' While the country's overall supply of highly skilled labor marginally exceeds demand, there is a shortage of adequately qualified (or employable) people. This is primarily due to three reasons:
-- Heterogeneous nature of universities or training institutions, with varying infrastructure, capabilities and facilities, as well as the quality of education and training provided by them
-- Lack of focus on development of skills pertaining to the specific requirement of employers
-- Non-recognition of the value of skilled workers by employers, particularly in the informal and small enterprise sectors
Realizing the significance and need for skilled manpower, private sector entities are taking several initiatives to contribute effectively to the Government's endeavors. Across business sectors, companies and industry associations are not only boosting their in-house training facilities, but are also taking steps to make potential employees job-ready before they join organizations.
However, to make this exercise a success, India has many lessons to learn and implement from international practices -as compared to 75 per cent of Germany's and 68 per cent of the UK's skilled work force, India accounts for account for 2 per cent. Therefore, far-reaching and deep rooted reforms are urgently needed if it wants to emulate countries, whose vocational education and training systems has been successful.
According to S Ramadorai, Advisor to the Prime Minister in National Skill Development Council, "60 per cent of India's 1.2 billion people are in the working age group. However, only 10 per cent of the 300 million children in India between the age of 6 and 16 will pass school and go beyond. Only 5 per cent of India's labor force in the age group 19-24 years is estimated to have acquired formal training. Despite this, our economy is clocking an 8.5% growth. Imagine what could be if we could leverage our demographic dividend fully."
FICCI recognizes that skills development is an imperative for achieving India's ambitious socio-economic growth targets. FICCI is committed to working with the stakeholders, especially the industry, government and academia to create sustainable and scalable skills training modules which will benefit the youth of the country from all sections of society.
"When the world is struggling with rightly skilled people for sustained economic growth, India is well poised to provide large share of such resources, besides meeting its own demand. This can be achieved only if adequate measures for regulation, monitoring and institutional delivery are taken care of and acted upon in next 5 years", says Abhaya Agarwal, Executive Director & PPP Leader, Ernst & Young.
The FICCI- E&Y paper calls for a robust, quality vocational and training framework in the country through a four-pronged approach that aims at improving quality, building a brand and spreading awareness, enhancing accessibility and increasing affordability. It recommends the following:
Improving quality
-- Quality training of faculty with industry participation:
-- Adopting flexible teaching methodology, facilitating movement of faculty to industry and industry personnel to institutions
-- Designing fellowship programs for faculty
-- Upgrading faculty with current and upcoming trades and technologies
-- Development of curriculum with focus on IT:
-- Increasing usage of computer-aided programs in curricula
-- Laying enhanced focus on imparting practical on-the-job training through computers
-- Linking curricula to practical industry experience using IT platforms
-- Promoting prototype equipment and delivery structures (using IT)
-- Promotion of PPP model for infrastructure development:
-- Promoting profit-making corporate model in the system to attract investments
-- Easing regulatory hurdles and providing single-window clearance to private players
-- Outsourcing short-term courses to organizations
-- Establishment of robust certification and standard setting mechanism:
-- Setting up nationally recognized qualification framework to create a credible system of certification to ensure that skills are portable and recognized across sectors, industries, enterprises and educational institutions
-- Industry collaborating with the Government to establish
an appropriate certification mechanism
Building a brand and spreading awareness
-- Mass awareness and promotional campaigns of vocational education and training systems:
-- Establishing information centers in which comprehensive information on vocational education and training is provided
-- Launching advertising and publicity campaigns to build brands and change people's attitude to vocational education and training
-- Skill development centers set up in universities:
-- Setting up skill development centers in universities to
revive brands and increase their visibility
Enhancing accessibility
-- Adoption of a flexible system:
-- Providing option to move from vocational training to higher education, and vice versa
-- Allowing credit for the number of years spent by an ITI student in training while seeking admission to a university
Integration of vocational education at the school level:
-- Imparting basic technical skills at the school level
-- Conducting special reorientation classes for school dropouts through professional career counseling
Disadvantaged groups and backward regions:
-- Designing special courses for people in remote areas and economically backward classes of society
Increasing affordability
-- Short duration courses with affordable fee structure:
-- Providing short-term informal training at nominal fees
-- Incentives to private training providers:
-- Giving incentives such as tax breaks to private players to keep the cost of training low
-- Availability of easy loans:
-- Making available easy banks loans at low interest rates for self-employment
-- Providing loans with income-contingent repayment Clause
CONTACT DETAILS
Pooja Gianchandani, Director and Head, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), +91 11 23487280, pooja.gianchandani@ficci.com
KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, PEOPLE, BUSINESS SERVICES, EDUCATION, MEDIA
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