Skill India: Australian special envoy announces new skills training initiative

The initiative comes after India and Australia signed an MoU for enhancing cooperation in education last year

The Australian government has taken another step to enhance its involvement in India's education and skilling sector, announced by Australia's Prime Ministerial Special Envoy Andrew Robb on Wednesday in New Delhi. 

Announcing that the new initiative, called "International Skills Training Courses", would be introduced in India, Robb said that the Australian government aimed to train at least 4,000 participants by the end of this year. 

The announcement came after Robb and former Australian cricketer and Australia India Education Ambassador Adam Gilchrist visited Blue Bells International school in New Delhi. The visit was part of  the Australia-India BRIDGE School Partnership, which aims to connect schools and students across both countries.

Highlighting the challenges right at the beginning, Robb said that while Australia had run pilot projects in the education and skilling sector in India before, it was time to scale things up. However, Robb said that the fundamental challenge centred around dealing with the vastness of a nation like India.

Robb stressed on the need to find a way of applying Australia's high-cost and high-quality model in India, keeping in mind the Prime MInister Narendra Modi government's ambitious goal to skill 400 million Indians by 2022. 

According to Robb, the initiative will receive an initial funding of 5.4 million Australian dollars — a substantial part of which will be earmarked for India. 

The initiative is modelled on the concept of "training the trainers". "By training the trainers, we can get a pyramid effect where they will go on to train others," said Robb. "The initiative is designed to provide training in core-elements related to various professions," he added. 

The international skills training courses are specifically designed to meet the needs of offshore international students. The aim of the courses, under this initiative is to address critical competency gaps and skills demands in a workforce. 

The courses will be incensed by the Australian government and will be delivered by registered Australian training organisations, in partnership with local training providers, government organisations and industry. 

The courses would be flexible and needs-based, added Robb.

Additionally, he also talked about mutual recognition of  educational institutes between the two countries. "It is not as if we will recognise every institution, but we have a process by which we can look at their standards. Both Australia and India have some wold class institutes," he said. 

Gilchrist, for his part, expressed his happiness on visiting India again as his country's education ambassador. 

The former Australian cricketer, who was appointed to the position in August last year, stressed on the importance of education through his personal experience. 

Stating that his parents had been teachers, as well as his siblings, he said that he too would have entered the same profession had he not taken up the bat. 

"These are very exciting times in the education sector," Gilchrist added.     

The initiative comes after India and Australia signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation (MoU) in the fields of education, training and research in August last year. The MoU was signed by Union HRD minister Smriti Irani and Australia's Minister for Education and Training Christopher Pyne after the third meeting of the Australia-India Education Council.