28 Skill Development
Mohan Kumar
Content Outline:
1. Learning Objectives
2. Introduction
3. Skill Education and Skill Training
4. Classification of Skills
5. Need for Skill Development
6. Policy initiatives undertaken by the government to create a hassle free environment for skill acquisition
7. Recognition to prior-learning
1. Learning Objectives:
At the end of this module learner will be able to know,
1. The conceptual relation between education, training and skill development
2. Classification of skills
3. Skill-gap and the need of skill development
4. Policy initiatives undertaken by the government to create a hassle free environment for skill acquisition
5.Recognition to prior-learning
2. Introduction
A cursory look on some of the extinct species and reasons behind their extinction reveal their inability to adapt with the ever changing geological circumstances that inversely affected their natural habitation. However, a large number of species could survive through the same atmospheric changes. Why? It was mainly because of their power or ability to adapt with the changing environment. This ability to adapt is skill with which lies the secret of human growth and excellence. Learning skills, be it reading, writing, computing, or operating any simple or complex instrument, have always been accorded top priority throughout the history of human evolution. What has changed with time and technological complexity is its form and scale.Once it was only life skills or survival skills which were in focus because of the lesser use of technology. Time has changed.Humanity is now traversing through the era of rapid advancementwhere technologyhas become an integral part of life and hence the need of variety of skills – basic and applied, hard and soft skills, marketable and non-marketable skills, unitary and composite skills, etc.
Each and every activity of ours specifically economic activities even at the rudimentary level requires a set of specified skills. Mere knowledge about something or about any discipline alone is not sufficient for ensuring a smooth entry in the job market unless it is accompanied by suitable skills. But irrespective of repeated recommendations for inclusion of vocational education and training and expanding the scope of lifelong learning by various educational commissions and committees the ongoing education system in the country has failed to assign due focus on skill training or skill development which has resulted into multiplying the rate of unemployment day-by-day at every level. Inadequate training infrastructure, mismatch between the Skills being developed in the Training system and what is needed in the labourmarket, mismatch between Technology used in Institutions of Learning and in Industry, mismatch between youth aspirations and jobs, dismal performance of the manufacturing sector have further aggravated the unemployment situation in India. Hence, academicians and policy planners have envisaged for an enhanced role to be played by state machinery in prioritizing skill education and training in the country.
Consequently the academic arena in India is now witnessinga range of activities being undertaken in terms of programme and policy initiatives by the state mechanism as well as universities and institutions in the field of skill development in the country such as enunciation of National Policy on Skill Development (NPSD), National Skill Qualification Framework, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), State Skills Development Missions and Sector Skill Councils, formulation of National Occupational Standards (NOSs), creation of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and launching of the mission Skilling India and Make in India programme. Together they constitute different dimensions of skill development.
3. Skill Education and SkillTraining
In general practice skill is one of those social science words which have numerous synonyms such as “ability”, “competence”, “knack”, “aptitude” and “talent”. The “skill” in economics is similar to “competence” in psychology.The Business Dictionary.com defines skill as ‘an ability and capacity acquired through deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to smoothly and adaptively carryout complexactivitiesor jobfunctionsinvolving ideas(cognitive skills), things (technical skills), and/or people (interpersonal skills).’Francis Green, Professor of Labour Economics and Skills Development, Institute of Education, University of London has offered a simple functional concept of ‘skill’. According to him ‘Skills’ have three key features and they are Productive- using skill is productive of value, Expandable- skills are enhanced by training and development and Social- skills are socially determined. He summarizes it as “PES” concept of skill.
However, to differentiate between skill education and skill training is not that complex. Jay Cross, who is credited with coining the phrase ‘e-learning’, said: “If your sixteen year-old daughter told you that she was going to take a sex education course at high school, you might be pleased. What if she announced she was going to take part in some sex training at school?”So the difference between education (learning) and training is not as negligible or irrelevant as may seem.
Education is all about learning the theory. Traditionally, an education may reinforce knowledge in which that you already have a foundation. For example, when you are at school, you may already have command of the English language, but you still learn English. Other subjects may be taught to you from scratch, but it is the theory that you learn. In Physics, you learn about splitting the atom, but you don’t do it. It is for this reason that the traditional professions like Accountancy, Law and Medicine require a period for further practical training after academic studies are complete. And that’s where training differs; training gives you the skills to do something rather than just know about that.Training can be specific to your need, your vocation or your skills-gap. It is there for people who want to implement a new system, improve a specific ability or further their ability in something.
4. Classification of Skills
Even the primitive men-women were using a set of skills like knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, the ability to find shelter, find water, to hunt and of course defend, and mainly the quest for fire which set them apart from all the mammals.This quest for innovative skills and acquiring them which is a never ending process has continuingly increased the number and types of skills. Till-date there exist no scientific method to classify skills. However, a few academicians and organizations have attempted to classify them as per the suitability of certain course curriculum and the need of industries. TheCVTips.com, a Curriculum Vitae guide has classified the skills into following four types:
Foundation Skills: These skills are a must for any employee. They are classified as Basic, People, Thinking and Personal Qualities. They all fall into the following two categories.
Marketable Skills: These are skills which are useful to your employer. They include (1) All the different types of skills mentioned in the foundation skill set above and (2) All the skills that the employer has specified in the advertisement for the job. Other than these two sets, any extra skills that you have, which are of absolutely no use to the boss are unmarketable skills. For example, singing a song backwards no matter how good you are at it!
Transferable Skills: These are the skills that are useful in more than one kind of job. The more you develop these, the more are your chances in the job market. An employer might be attracted to your profile even if he has no immediate use for your extra skills, if he foresees any use for them in the future. The most common skill in this category is computer literacy. Armed with this, one can be a typist, a helper in a store, a document writer and a variety of other things.
Motivated Skills: There is a saying that goes like this ‘Find a job you love and you will never have to work a single day’. This is what motivated skills are all about. Things that you want to do, not things you have to do.
Skillscan.com has classified them into the following:
Technical/ Work-specific skills are specific to a job and are not easily applied in other environments or situations. These skills tend to be technical and specialized.
Functional/transferable skills can be applied in most environments and situations and are mainly based on ability and aptitude of a person. They refer to actions taken to perform a task, transferable to different work functions and industriesand incorporate various combinations of data, people, and thing skills. Examples of functional skills include communication, planning, organizing, managing, analyzing, and problem-solving.
Personal Traits/Attitudes(sometimes referred to as Self-management skills) Developed in childhood and through life experience these traits or personality characteristics contribute to performing work are related to how we conduct ourselves and are rooted in temperament. Examples of these skills include taking the initiative, resourcefulness, being good-natured, and reliability.
Knowledgebased Skill is related with knowledge of specific subjects, procedures, and information necessary to perform particular tasks. Such skills are mainly acquired through education, training, and on-the-job experience. For example skills related with Personnel Administration, Contract Management, and Accounting etc.
In the field of literacy Unesco has categorized literacy skills into following three levels:
Level 1 is the Basic Level which indicates that a learner is capable to read and understand simple printed paragraphs, write simple letters and count and recognize figures from 1-1000.
Level 2 istheMiddle Level that indicates learner’s ability to read and comprehend stories, songs, directions,instructions and simple parts of news papers;write simple notes and letters and demonstrate proficiency in adding and subtracting.
Level 3 is the Self-Learning Level. At this level learners are expected to analyzeand synthesize main ideas of whattheyread;write one/two pages on certain topics and add and subtract large numbers with accuracy andspeed.
- Need for Skill Development
It is a fact that even after much initiative taken by the government there exist a huge gap between our collective capacity to impart vocational education and training and the number of enrolment in secondary/ higher secondary classes in the country which is reflected in the following table:
The table above shows that as on date the population in the age group 14-16 yrs as per Census 2011 is 75.9 million while the targeted enrolment in classes IX and X is 30.9 million. That means 45 million people seeking training / employment in the targeted age group will remain out of school. Even all of those students studying in the secondary/ higher secondary classes would not be able to avail any specific vocational training as our consolidated capacity to provide such training is around 2.5 million per annum. It is mainly due to our inability to harness the existing training opportunities in the country which is around 9.95 million people per annum as projected by Ministry of Labor and Employment, GOI. The department-wise projected training capacity of the country per annum is as follows:
Globalization, knowledge, innovation and competition have further intensified the need for skilled workforce as it enables nations to accelerate their growth rate towards higher trajectory.In India both the Government and its partner agencies have undertaken various measures/initiatives such as Make in India, Skilling India for the effective implementation of the skill development system in the economy, but still faces a number of unresolved issues/challenges leading to Skills under-utilization, skills gap, Skills deficit and Skills shortage vacancy that need immediate attention of the policy makers India direly needs a policy framework targeted towards neutralizing the existing obstacles in the educational arena of the country. The National Vocational Education Qualification Framework is nothing but the country’s collective response to ensure a hassle free journey to its students/adult learners towards acquiring knowledge, skills and training.
6. Policy initiatives undertaken by the government to create a hassle free environment for skill acquisition
I. Apprenticeship Act, 1961
The Apprenticeship Act was enacted to supplement the programme of industrial training with on-the-job training and to regulate the training arrangements in the industry. It came into force on 1st March 1962 and is applicable to whole of India.The object of the act is to impose statutory obligation on all employers in the notified industries to engage apprentices in the ratio prescribed for designated trades. Any person above 14 years and satisfying specified standards of education and physical fitness may apply for undergoing training as an apprentice. The act also provides for reservation of certain training vacancies for persons of scheduled castes and tribes keeping in view their population in the states. According to this act employer is supposed to provide required training facilities for training and also to bear the cost of training, if he employs 250 or more workers. An employer also has to pay stipulated stipend to the apprentice and has to take care of apprentices’ health, safety and welfare as indicated in the Factory Act. Started on voluntary basis in 1959 initially the Act envisaged training of Trade Apprentices. The Act was amended in 1973 to include training of Graduate and Diploma Engineers as “Graduate” & “Technician” Apprentices. It was further amended in 1986 to bring within its purview the training of the 10+2 vocational stream as “Technician (Vocational)” Apprentices. In 1997 it was again amended to amend various sections of the Act as regards definition of “establishment” and “worker”, termination of apprenticeship contract, number of apprentices for a designated trade, practical and basic training of apprentices, obligation of employers, penalty for contravening the provisions of the Act and cognizance of offences.
The Act was again amended in 2008 to amend various sections of the Act as regards reservation for candidates belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBCs), expenditure on Related Instruction (RI) shall be imparted at the cost of employer and the employer shall, when so required, afford all facilities for imparting such instructions and to provide flexibility in respect of ratios prescribed for apprenticeship seats. In 2014 it was amended for the last time replacing Trade-wise regulation by a band of 2.5% to 10% of the total strength of the workers, introduction of optional trades, extending the scope to Non-engineering occupations, doing away with imprisonment for non compliance and limiting the penalties to fine only. Allowing outsourcing of Basic Training and bringing the establishments operating in four or more states into the fold of Central authorities for easy interface, etc. Currently 2.12 lakh training seats for the trade apprentices are being utilized against 3.92 lakh seats identified under the Act.
II. National Skill Development Policy (2009)
On the basis of 11th plan recommendation for creation of a comprehensive National Skill Development Mission, a Coordinated Action on Skill Development was envisaged in UPA-2 regime. In 2009, the government launched a National Policy on Skill Development to train 500 million people by 2022 by empowering all individuals through improved skills, knowledge and nationally and internationally recognized qualifications to gain access to decent employment and ensure India’s competitiveness in global market. It also aimed to increase produce workforce in organized and unorganized sectors especially among youth, women, disables, disadvantage sections.
In this way, a three tier institutional structure came up in India in last decade which had the following three tiers-
§ PM’s National Council on skill development
§ National Skill Development Coordination Board (NSDCB) and
§ National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)
In the above structure, the functions were as follows: The PM’s National Council spelt out vision to create 500 million skilled people by 2022 through skill systems. NSDCB was given the task to cooperate with a large number of central ministries, departments and state governments. NSDC was charged for preparing comprehensive action plans and activities which would promote PPP models of financing skill development. The National Skill Development Corporation was set up as a public-private-partnership project.
III. National Vocational Education Qualification Framework
As per the Executive Order, MHRD, GOI vide dated 20.1.2011 the NVEQF is a descriptive framework that organizes qualifications according to a series of levels of knowledge along with skills. These levels are defined in terms of learning outcomes i.e., the competencies which the learners must possess regardless of whether they were acquired through formal, non-formal or informal education and training. Qualifications are made-up of occupational standards for specific areas of learning units. This would provide the stakeholders such as the learners, education and skill training providers and employers to gain information about the broad equivalence of qualifications across specific skill sectors. It is, therefore, a nationally integrated education and competency based skill framework that will provide for multiple pathways both within vocational education and between general and vocational education to link one level of learning to another higher level and enable learners to progress to higher levels from any starting point in the education and/or skill system. The key elements to be provided under the NVEQF are:
National principles for providing vocational education leading to international equivalency and transfer between vocational education and general education:
There is no mechanism for certification (recognition) of informal learning, which disadvantages the worker in the labour market, and constrains labour mobility and national and international level. Indian education system so far has been planned and organized primarily to cater to the needs of the organized sector, which employs less than 10% of the workforce. Unorganized sector, which primarily deals with serving the community to provide repair and maintenance and other services as per felt needs employ 90% of the workforce. With the demand for high quality services, India will need highly skilled workforce as well as technician engineers, who have diagnostic capabilities and are able to provide repair and maintenance services. A majority of workers in the unorganized sector are with lower levels of literacy, as they have left the school at various stages of education. They face difficulty in returning to schools or training institutions to improve their skills, as the education or TVET system does not allow them to do so. The NVEQF will facilitate the recognition of informal learning, e.g., skills acquired at the workplace could be formally certified through an awarding body. It will provide opportunities to the people working in the unorganized sector to gain recognition of their competencies for National and International mobility or join the formal education and training system.
Multiple entry and exit between vocational education, general education and job markets and progression within vocational education:
At present a majority of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes, including those offered at School, Industrial Training Institutes, Polytechnics, and Private Training Institutes are terminal in nature, as they have been designed without any clear cut entry requirements and progression routes for vertical mobility and therefore, act as dead ends. In the absence of a National level approach to TVET planning, implementation and monitoring, the courses and programmes lack uniformity in terms of duration, entry requirements for the course / programme and nomenclature of qualification across institutions. Provision of clear progression pathways for the horizontal (across the courses) and vertical mobility (between lower and higher level courses) through clearly defined ‘NVEQ levels’ under the NVEQF will open up possibilities for the students to pursue higher education in the same or related vocation. Such provision will also enable addressing the issue of inequity and disparity between the vocational and general education courses. In addition the barriers to entry into universities for students going through TVET will to reduced and greater career options would be available to the students.
Partnership with industry/employers:
It is critical that there is a direct link between the educational inputs and the occupational employment outputs. Vocational courses should be demand and need based, keeping in mind the constantly changing requirements of technologies/industries/employers. The syllabi of vocational courses should be updated on a regular basis to keep pace with changes in technology. Modularization of courses will reduce the drop-out rate in the school system as the modules are of short duration and as modularization makes credit transfer possible – so even if a learner drops out of a modularized training programme he/she may still accumulate credit and renter the learning pathway. In addition, modularization increases the responsiveness of curriculum to technological changes and skill demands of the industry, as it is possible to change and update specific modules instead of changing the whole programme. The modularization of courses/programmes under the NVEQF will create the possibility for changing only ‘specific units’ of the syllabus for cyclic updation of the courses in 2-3 years.
IV. National Skill Qualification Framework
While accommodating the major outcomes of all the previous efforts made on the line of devising a nationally accepted qualification framework capable to address efficiently the need of the hour, specifically that of the National Vocational Education Qualification Framework developed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and National Vocational Qualification Framework by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance notified on 27th December, 2013 vide Part 1, Section 2, published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary, the details of the National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) in pursuance of the decision taken by the Cabinet Committee on Skill Development in its meeting held on 19th December, 2013. This National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) will not only supersede all the previous Framework but it will be mandatory for all the stakeholders to tune themselves and comply with the provisions of NSQF in a period of five years from the date of notification of NSQF.
The notification on NSQF is certainly going to usher in a new era in the field of education in general and skill education in particular by adopting an outcome based approach and credit transfer and accumulation system, recognizing prior learning, ensuring horizontal and vertical mobility, making the progression pathways transparent, establishing equivalence of certificates/diplomas/degrees and aligning Indian qualifications to international qualifications in accordance with relevant bilateral and multilateral agreements. With the implementation of NSQF, the learners in India would now be able to realize that ‘sky is the limit’ whether in acquiring education, learning skills or knocking the threshold of national or international job market that too at par with anybody else in world.
7. Recognition to prior-learning
Education is a lifelong process which enables the continuous development of a person’s capabilities as an individual and as a member of society, can take place in three different forms namely formal education, informal education and non-formal education.
In India we have two types of vocational education and training programmes, one is formal and the other is non-formal. Till date both of them are mainly oriented towards preparing learners for availing the job opportunities available in the organized sector which altogether accommodates only 8% of the whole employable manpower. The remaining 92% of employable manpower avail job opportunities in the unorganized sector which contributes more than 60% share to the GDP of the country. However, there exists neither any system to provide skill training to the personnel employed in the unorganized sector nor any system to recognize or to certify the skills acquired by this vast manpower.
Today, in a complex and fast-changing world, it is necessary for individuals to acquire and adapt competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) through all forms of learning to cope with various emerging challenges. However, qualification system prevailing in the country still focuses on recognition of competencies acquired through the formal system of education only. As a result, a large number of individuals’ who have acquired learning through informal or non-formal learning modes remain unrecognized. This leads to a huge under-utilization of human talent and resources in society. Therefore, the learning outcomes that young people and adults acquire in the course of their life in non-formal and informal settings need to be assessed, certified and recognized to motivate them for lifelong learning and to enhance their productivity.
The demand for the recognition, validation and accreditation (RVA) of all forms of learning with a focus on non-formal and informal learning outcomes was expressed through the Belem Framework for Action, adopted by 144 Delegations of UNESCO Member States at the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI) in Brazil in December 2009.
As stated earlier VET system in India has almost no system for recognizing and certifying the prior learning of an individual working in unorganized sector specifically in the traditional occupations across the country, Government of India initiated the action on Recognition of Prior Learning as part of National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF) vide its Executive order issued by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on 3rd September 2012.
According to this Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is a method of assessment that considers whether the candidates can meet the assessment requirements for a competency or a set of competencies that they already possess. The table below shows the education and training system envisaged by NVEQF which permits individuals to accumulate their knowledge and skills in a progression mode. In this flexible mode a series of levels of competencies / skills have been arranged in ascending order starting from RPL1and RPL2 and leading towards level 1 to 10 as cited in the following Table:
There are four key stakeholders in the RPL process, namely Awarding and Certification
Body, Mentor, Assessing Agency/ Assessor, and Participants/Learner. The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), in specific terms and Open Schooling System in general has been mandate to develop assessment system and evolve process of certification to offer such recognition to prior learning with the active support of industries which may lead to career progression and skill up gradation of the workforce. A mentor or facilitator is the key support person who will provide necessary support, information, advice and overall guidance to the persons approaching RPL. An Assessor or judge is supposed to make recommendations for either an award, or entry to a programme, or an exemption to the candidate/ learner based on the evidence provided by the learners against criteria as outlined in the national occupational standard. Skilled workers engaged in organized and unorganized sectors small scale enterprises, self-
employed people and people engaged in ‘traditional activities’ are considered as the participants in RPL.
The key links between the employers, learners and certification body as outlined in the ‘Framework for Recognition of Prior Learning’ developed by NIOS is shown in the following Diagram:
Definitions:
Formal Education– the structured educational system usually provided or supported by the state, chronologically graded and running from primary to tertiary institutions;
Informal Education – learning that goes on in daily life and can be received from daily experience, such as from family, friends, peer groups, the media and other influences in a person’s environment; and
Non-formal Education – educational activity which is not structured and takes place outside the formal system.
Skills under-utilization occurs where a worker has work related skills not used (or used at too low a level) in the job. This phenomenon is loosely related to the concept of “over education”, where someone has achieved education at a level higher than needed to get the job they are doing.
A skills gap is the opposite case, where an employees’ competence to do the job is called into question (typically by their managers). This phenomenon is relatively uncommon in cases where employers are free either to train or dismiss incompetent workers.
Skills deficit indicates thatthe level of skills supplied and used is below the desirable level.
Skills shortage vacancy is a mismatch phenomenon that applies to the employer: it describes the situation where a job vacancy is hard to fill because applicants lack needed skills.
Unorganized Sector: According to Social Security for Unorganized Workers a report by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector in 2006 ‘ All unincorporated enterprises owned by individuals or households engaged in the production and sale of goods and operated on a proprietary or partnership basis and employing less than 10 persons constitute the unorganized sector.’
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References
- Skilling India – a look back at the progress, challenges and the way forward by KPMG and FICCI
- https://elearningindustry.com/education-and-training-what-is-the-difference
- http://www.skillscan.com
- http://www.cvtips.com/career-success/know-the-different-types-of-skills.html
- http://www.gktoday.in/blog/challenges-to-skill-development-in-india/
- Skilling India: Policy Initiatives and Outcomes, V.Mohankumar and B.Sanjay Indian Adult Education Association, New Delhi, November 2014
- ACCU and UNESCO. 2001. Handbook, Adult Learning Materials Development as Community Level p.13.