Aus keen to broaden skill engagement with India

Australia has expressed keen interest in broadening its skill engagement with India and working closely with the country to explore innovative and creative ways to realise the potential for increased partnership in the area.
"Australiadeeply valuesits close and productive bilateral skills relationship with India and both nations sharesmuch in common with skills collaborations," Australian education and training ministerSimon Birmingham said while addressing a large gathering of high-profile leaders at closingdinner ofAustraliaIndia Leadership Dialogue 2016 yesterday at MCG.
"As we seek to broaden skills engagement with India, we are eager to collaborate, work closely with industry, the training sector and government, to explore innovative and creative ways to realise the potential for increased skills partnership," he said.

"We appreciate that with such a young population, India faces both an opportunity and a very formidable challenge to expand the capacity and quality of the skills training sector," Birmingham said, adding that India's target of skilling 400 million people by 2022 was impressive, andmind-blowing by Australian standards.
"We are well-placed to work in building India's capacity to meet its enormous training demand. Australian vocational education is internationally recognised for its unique qualification structure, industry-focused training, all of which lead to high employability outcomes," he said.
Indian and Australianleaders includingShadow Treasurer Chris Bowen,Assistant Minister to Prime Minister Senator James McGrath, the newly- appointedIndian High Commissioner A M Gondane, Melbourne-based Consul General Manika Jain, former Australia India Institute (AII)Director Amitabh Mattoo and AII director Craig Jeffrey attended the event.

"We have been delighted to see that Australia's Kangan Institute is working with India's Government of Gujarat and Maruti Suzuki to build India's first international Automobile Centre of Excellence," Birmingham said.

"In abilateral sense, we're also doing substantial work with India on the development of international occupational standards to support greater shared understanding of skills and mobility in skills for industry across country borders," he said.
He said thatother approaches to skills training were also being testedto assist in meeting international market needs, such as the international training and assessment courses; an example of the Australian Government and Australian providers working with Indian partners to build the skills and capabilities that vocational education trainers and assessors.

This has been piloted with over 300 learners from eight countries participating. Australiawantedto remain a country of choice for Indian students and aspire to be a partner of choice to India in education sector with afirm focus on opportunities inhigher education,scholarship programs, two-way exchangeresearch programs as well asvocational and training courses, Birmingham said.