The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) which has been working to formulate systems and structures for skill development in the young people in the country, is now planning to take vocational education to schools. With the approval of Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal, NSDC will impart training in five skills from the middle school level in schools in Haryana based on the Switzerland model of Vocational Education Training (VET) from the next academic year.
In this regard, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Swiss VET, represented by SkillSonics India Pvt Ltd, signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation and assistance in vocational education training on the concluding day of the Global Summit on Skills Development, organised by CII in Chennai on February 21 and 22.
The MoU was signed by Supriya Banerji, deputy director general, CII and G P Chandrakumar, project director, Swiss Skills Initiative, India, and chairman and CEO, SkillSonics.
M V Subbiah, Chairman, NSDC said that the self esteem of the physical labour skills, which were once the pride of this country, had been systematically destroyed. “The self esteem has to be brought back to the skills that involve the combined effort of the hands and the mind. NSDC is planning a big campaign to bring about this change on a national front,” he said. If the experiment was found be successful it would be taken to other states, he added.