In an opinion piece written for The Indian Express on July 15, 2020, M Venkaiah Naidu, the current Vice President of India, calls for “130 crore Indians to showcase the country’s collective resolve to overcome the setbacks caused by the pandemic.” He suggests that the solution lies in “harnessing India’s human resources and technological capabilities,” by focusing on “skills, scale and speed.”
The Vice President is not alone in pointing to the importance of skilling as a part of India’s strategy to recover from the social and economic impact of COVID19. Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, has also noted that “there will be heavy focus on re-skilling and up-skilling,” along with “blended models of learning,” in a post COVID19 India.
At Leap, we have been working for the education and skill development of thousands of learners across the country for the last seven years. We strongly believe that skilling our youth is the key to unlocking the country’s full potential. The first step toward getting prepared for this recovery has to be understanding the emergent issues in the skilling ecosystem.
We caught up with Rahul Khanna, Vice-President of Government Programs, over the last week, to get a clear picture of the ground concerns and the path forward. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.
Question: How are Sector Skill Councils and Training Partners impacted by COVID19?
“Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) and Training Partners (TPs) have been impacted very significantly because of the country-wide halt on training. SSCs and TPs are trying to keep the students engaged with online sessions on Zoom and Google Meet etc, but there are no clear ways to gauge student learning.
There is a very active fear of losing students once normalcy returns. Several TPs have been forced to shut shop, others are trying to hang on by venturing into Apprenticeship and Placements, and some are finding new opportunities like content development, content digitization and Training-of-Trainers to venture into.”
Question: What are some important changes that you foresee in the Indian Skilling space?
“COVID19 has presented us with an opportunity to think about leveraging technology and making it an integral part of future training programs.
Traditionally, training has been imparted through a brick and mortar model with face to face interaction between trainers and learners. Post COVID, adoption of technology and innovation will play a key role in adjusting to the new normal and keep learners engaged throughout.
Along with this, we believe that an emphasis on Employability, Entrepreneurship, and better curriculum design, are the need of the hour. Upskilling the current set of trainers is of equal importance. They need to be up-skilled and trained on new technologies and online pedagogy. There is a need to shift the focus from enrolment to the quality of training imparted.
Policy level changes are definitely required to formalize the change for good. Steps have already been taken in this direction. The New Education Policy and the eSkillIndia initiative by the National Skill Development Corporation are some examples.”
Question: Do we have the IT infrastructure for a digital skilling system?
“As per Union Budget 2020, Govt has allocated 99,300 Crores toward upliftment and improvement of Education, along with 3000 Crores toward skill development. In addition, there is a need for active participation from the private sector towards building a digital skill ecosystem. This could be done by setting up Centres of Excellence in every city, implementing the ‘Hire, Train & Deploy’ approach, imparting practical Training to ITI students etc.”
Question: Are the curriculum and assessment methods built for digital delivery?
“To be honest, the curriculum needs to be redesigned. Content which can be easily learned online and is constant globally can be moved online. This will save man hours and significant costs. Technical content can be taught in a blended fashion where trainers are making videos and giving online demos to their students to facilitate learning.
We need to aggressively move towards digitization of the content keeping factors like student
engagement in mind. Simply converting a text book into a pdf is definitely not the solution.”
Question: Are our trainers prepared for adopting digital training methods?
“Introduction of new technology or processes always comes with its own set of challenges. With investments in innovation, new tools, and technologies across the world at an all- time high, there is an inevitable need to upgrade the way we teach. Many trainers however are not comfortable with presentations and other specialised digital learning tools.
Training the trainers on the new training methods and innovative tools available is key to push student engagement and effectively gauge learning outcomes.”
Question: Are we prepared to recover skilling in a post-lockdown world?
“We do not think anybody was prepared for the world that we live in today. At the same time, the current situation has presented us all with a huge opportunity to upgrade the education and skilling systems. Learning is a continuous process, and keeping oneself up to date with the new innovations for a better tomorrow is the right approach.
The pandemic has pushed everyone to come together and build solutions that are, both, equitable and scalable. This cooperation across stakeholders is a massive advantage. We strongly believe that with this, we are very well-positioned to recover skilling. It is, of course, for us to lose the advantage.”