National Skill Development Mission

Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development in a country. As opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal vocational skills.

Realising the importance, more than 20 Ministries/Departments run 70 plus schemes for skill development in the country. The National Skill Development Mission launched by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship on July 15, 2015, aims to create convergence across sectors and States in terms of skill training activities. Besides consolidating and coordinating skilling efforts, it also aims to expedite decision making across sectors to achieve skilling at scale with speed and standards.

Mission Statement

To rapidly scale up skill development efforts in India, by creating an end-to-end, outcome-focused implementation framework, which aligns demands of the employers for a well-trained skilled workforce with aspirations of Indian citizens for sustainable livelihoods.

Mission Objectives

The Mission seeks to:

• Create an end-to-end implementation framework for skill development, which provides opportunities for life-long learning. This includes: incorporation of skilling in the school curriculum, providing opportunities for quality long and short-term skill training, by providing gainful employment and ensuring career progression that meets the aspirations of trainees.
• Align employer/industry demand and workforce productivity with trainees’ aspirations for sustainable livelihoods, by creating a framework for outcome focused training.
• Establish and enforce cross-sectoral, nationally and internationally acceptable standards for skill training in the country by creating a sound quality assurance framework for skilling, applicable to all Ministries, States and private training providers.
• Build capacity for skill development in critical un-organised sectors (such as the construction sector, where there few opportunities for skill training) and provide pathways for re-skilling and up-skilling workers in these identified sectors, to enable them to transition into formal sector employment.
• Ensure sufficient, high quality options for long-term skilling, bench marked to internationally acceptable qualification standards, which will ultimately contribute to the creation of a highly skilled workforce.
• Develop a network of quality instructors/trainers in the skill development ecosystem by establishing high quality teacher training institutions.
• Leverage existing public infrastructure and industry facilities for scaling up skill training and capacity building efforts.
• Offer a passage for overseas employment through specific programmes mapped to global job requirements and bench marked to international standards.
• Enable pathways for transitioning between the vocational training system and the formal education system, through a credit transfer system.
• Promote convergence and co-ordination between skill development efforts of all Central Ministries/Departments/States/implementing agencies.
• Support weaker and disadvantaged sections of society through focused outreach programmes and targeted skill development activities.
• Propagate aspirational value of skilling among youth, by creating social awareness on value of skill training.
• Maintain a national database, known as the Labour Market Information System (LMIS), which will act as a portal for matching the demand and supply of skilled workforce in the country. The LMIS, will on the one hand provide citizens with vital information on skilling initiatives across the country. On the other, it will also serve as a platform for monitoring the performance of existing skill development programmes, running in every Indian state.

Mission Strategy

• National Skill Development Mission will initially consist of seven sub-missions under its purview. Each sub-mission will act as a building block for achieving the overall objectives of the Mission. Key focus areas of the sub-mission include:
  • addressing the long-term and short-term skilling needs through revamp of existing institutional training framework and establishing new institutions
  • undertake sector specific skill training initiatives
  • ensure convergence of existing skill development programmes
  • leverage existing public infrastructure for skilling
  • focus on training of trainers
  • facilitate overseas employment, and
  • promote sustainable livelihoods.

Sub-Missions

Skill Sub-Mission: Institutional Training

Objectives

• To drive quantity, quality and reach of training provision and outcomes.
• To provide horizontal and vertical pathways to academic qualifications and the job market, respectively.
• To provide demand driven, outcome focused training aimed at achieving high placement rates.
• To upgrade and modernize all existing training institutions, like ITIs, ATIs etc. under DDG(Training) to make them more responsive to industry demand.
• To specifically focus on reforms in five key areas concerning these existing institutions,
  • Curriculum flexibility,
  • Training equipment and workshops,
  • Pedagogy,
  • Industry interface, and
  • Financial model.
• To supplement training by providing opportunities to earn and learn through apprenticeships.
• To change people’s perceptions about vocational training and make skill development aspirational with opportunities for long-term career progression.

Skill Sub-Mission: Infrastructure

Objectives

• To build capacity and ensure high quality skill development in infrastructure including construction sector to increase productivity of workers in this sector, through an emphasis on on-site training.
• To match projected requirement of additional 31 million workers to work in construction sector over the next five years.
• To provide existing workers in this sector the opportunity to have long-term sustainable livelihoods through RPL and up-skilling.

Skill Sub-Mission: Convergence

Objectives

• To ensure convergence and co-ordination of skill development efforts across multiple stakeholders in the skill landscape of the country: central and state Ministries/Departments, private training providers, assessment agencies, industry bodies, and workers.

Skill Sub-Mission: Trainers

Objectives

• To improve overall quality of instruction at training institutions across the country.
• To meet trainer’s training requirement in each sector and geographical region across India.
• To ensure adequate availability of trainers in the skills space.
• To provide trainers with long-term career progression pathways.

Skill Sub-Mission: Overseas Employment

Objectives

• To ensure that youth in India are trained at the highest global standards, in order to enable them to access employment opportunities abroad.
• To provide information about employment opportunities abroad and enable aspirants to access them.
• To ensure international mobility of skilled workers in the country

Skill Sub-Mission: Sustainable Livelihoods

Objectives

• To empower trainees by assisting them to maximize the potential of skill training by providing them a pathway to access long-term sustainable livelihoods.

Skill Sub-Mission: Leveraging Public infrastructure

Objectives

• To optimise the usage of existing public infrastructure to scale up skill development efforts across India

Financing

The implementation of skilling activities under the Mission will be as per the budget provisions of various schemes under their respective heads of account. The administrative expenses of the Mission will be borne from the budget of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

By: Abhishek pratap Singh