Aus govt helping India achieve target of 400 mn skilled people

Seeking to help India boost its skill base to over 40 crore people by 2022, the Australian government has initiated training and assessment courses in the country.
Under the pilot project, already started in six states, the Australian government is providing Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to trainers in various industry sectors like management, engineering, health and well-being.
"The programme involves imparting skills on a 'training the trainer' basis. We have a pilot programme running in different states over the last six to nine months. It will have a pyramid effect where you can quickly expand the numbers of trainer across India to meet the target of training 400 million people over the next few years and to do that nearly 400,000 to 500,000 trainers need to be skilled up," Andrew Robb, Australia's Special Envoy for Trade, said.

The foreign government has developed three courses, TVET Trainer Course, TVET Assessor Course and TVET Advanced Trainer and Assessor Course in consultation with the National Skill Development Corporation to fulfill the growing needs for skilled workers.
"The Australian government is working with the national government and relevant organisations to ensure these courses are recognised internationally," Robb said.
The courses are delivered by registered Australian training organisations in partnership with local training providers, state governments and private employers.

Highligtingon Australia-India education relationship,
hesaid,"We work to ensure that we identify the important issues that are barriers to the participation successfully of students from India who come to Australia, or of training providers from Australia going to India, and importantly are seeking to ensure that we maximise and enhance the two-way flow of students, because it is a true mutual exchange and a building of a better, stronger understanding across our nations," Birmingham said.

"As Education Minister, I want to focus quickly on a few of the education issues important to our two countries, the strong relationships we have built over time as well as the opportunities for future growth. Our main vehicle for education engagement is the Australia India Education Council, which I am pleased to co-chair with my counterpart, the Honourable Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Human Resources and Development," he said.
"Through their four working groups, our countries look at areas of higher education and research, qualifications recognition and quality assurance, schools and skills to identify the key areas in which we can work together to achieve goals to the benefit of both our nations," he added.

The minsiter said thatAustralia wasaspiringto be a partner of choice to India in education, creating the knowledge and opportunities to help both the side becomestronger and more prosperous.
"Through opportunities such as this, the Australia-India Leadership Dialogue, we can bring together senior leaders from education, coupled with those from government, industry and business to discuss areas of mutual interest that will enable us to deepen that education cooperation that already exists," he said.
The minister said in2015 Australia received around 640,000 students from around the world of which around 10 per cent were fromIndia, making it the second most popular country for arrivals, behind China.

He said thatseveral projects were already in place likeUniversity of Western Australia, Punjab University and International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics were working on a joint project to address the issue of climate stresses on the growth of chickpeas.
India is the world's largest producer of chickpeas, producing nine million tons.
"India of course also happens to be Australia's largest chickpea export market, with up to 80 per cent of our one million tonnes exported to India. But chickpea production is being challenged and restricted by salinity and drought, doubly in India because of the intense heat. And this of course is a particular issue where chickpeas are a part of the staple diet," Birmingham said.