The Knowledge Commission feels that conducting skill tests of passing-out students before they apply for jobs will improve the quality of the workforce,
Soon, a technical degree may no longer be enough to get a job in a top company. Instead, one may have to clear a skill ability test even before applying.
In a bid to improve the quality of technical and vocational education, the National Knowledge Commission has recommended setting up agencies to conduct skill tests of those who pass out before they apply for jobs.
The private agencies could test the skills of graduates and inform the industry about their ability. And the job could be awarded accordingly.
In a set of recommendations submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office, the NKC has said independent agencies or industry bodies can conduct tests to ascertain the suitability of the output of institutions of higher learning.
“This will help improve the quality of Indian workforce both in the international and domestic market. It will also help assess the education being delivered by a particular institution,” an NKC member said.
NASSCOM has already started competency tests for entry into the BPO and IT sectors. The first NASSCOM Assessment of Competency for the BPO sector was conducted in November. In January, a similar test will be conducted for entry into the IT industry, NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik announced on Thursday.
The NKC felt the need for mandatory tests following severe criticism of the quality of graduates from technical education institutions. Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys and a Commission member, pointed out that over 90 per cent of graduates from technical education institutes need skill upgradation to meet industry needs.
NASSCOM had also said that most IT professionals from Indian institutes needed retraining after employment before they could be assigned tasks.
For financially-productive vocational education, the NKC has recommended that industry be allowed to open new vocational colleges to teach and train manpower as per their needs. “The government can also run present vocational colleges with the help of industry as part of public-private partnership,” the member said.
Work on this has already started. The Labour Ministry has decided to run 100 vocational colleges with the help of industry. The new colleges will be opened in collaboration with industry, a Planning Commission official said. He also said a National Mission on Vocational Training will be set up.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
