Title: Skill India’ urgently needs reforms
(There is no way the country can reap its demographic dividend without fixing vocational education)
In 2016, the Government of India formed the Sharada Prasad Committee to rationalise the Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), which are employer bodies mostly promoted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry and other industry associations, and improve ‘Skill India’.
The committee submitted its report in 2016. Now over a year later, it may be prudent to look at the reforms it suggested and action taken in the vocational education/training (VET) system.
The two goals in ‘Skill India’ are, first, to meet employers’ needs of skills and, second, to prepare workers (young and old) for a decent livelihood. The recurring theme in the report is its focus on youth.
Each recommendation underlines that the VET is not just for underprivileged communities; it is not a stopgap arrangement for those who cannot make it through formal education. It is for all of us.
Streaming for students
It suggests concrete steps to ensure a mindset change, such as having a separate stream for vocational education (in secondary education), creating vocational schools and vocational colleges for upward mobility, and having a Central university to award degrees and diplomas.
China, for instance, has such a separate stream after nine years of compulsory schooling, and half the students choose VET at the senior secondary level (after class nine).
A global alignment
The second recurring theme is the realisation of human potential. This means aligning the courses to international requirements, ensuring a basic foundation and life-long learning. It implies national standards for an in-demand skill set with national/global mobility that translates into better jobs.
Short duration courses (with no real skills) that provide low pay for suboptimal jobs cannot be called national standards. Hence the current national standards have to drastically improve.
This means that we should have no more than 450 courses — Germany has only 340 courses — in accordance with the National Classification of Occupations 2015.
The focus should be in strengthening reading, writing and arithmetic skills. No skill development can succeed if most of the workforce lacks the foundation to pick up skills in a fast-changing world. Vocational training must by definition be for a minimum of a year, which includes internship (without which certification is not possible). Short-term training should be confined to recognising prior learning of informally trained workers who are already working.
The third theme is to do what is right when no one is watching you, because, as in other industries, the regulator has displayed a limited capacity to regulate. Cases of a conflict of interests, of rigged assessments and of training happening only on paper are not new.*
For a unification
The first policy step should be towards a unification of the entire VET system. What we have today are fragmented pillars. Each of the five pillars does what it wants to, with no synergy.
Skill India can have an impact only when all of them work together and learn from each other.
The second step is to enhance employer ownership, responsibility and their ‘skin in the game.’
Data gathering by sector
Does the government, which is not generating much employment in the public sector, really know what industry’s skill requirements are in the private sector? Private employers do know this but there has been no serious effort by them to gather data. So the government needs to confine itself to roles it is capable of performing and not involving itself through multiple ministries in activities in which it has no comparative advantage.
One such role is to have surveys, once every five years, through the National Sample Survey Office, to collect data on skill providers and skill gaps by sector. Such data can guide evidence-based policy-making, as against the current approach of shooting in the dark.
India can surely become the world’s skill capital but not with what it is doing right now.
