New Delhi:  European Union and India today launched a project on Skills Development. The project will receive an assistance of 6 million Euros from the European Union over the next four and a half years.

Launching the project Dr João Cravinho, Ambassador of the European Union said, “Skills development is the central thread of ‘Europe 2020’ strategy, as well as the Indian National Skills Development Mission. We are very happy to partner with India in this area. With this project both EU and India will engage in tackling challenging issues like new skills for the ever changing employment market.”

The main objective will be to support the development of a National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) in three key economic sectors in pilot States and to gather information about the needs of industry for skilled labour force. The project will focus on three vocational sectors selected from the 20 high growth sectors prioritised by the Indian government.  This will create an opportunity to “learn by doing” and build competence in the development of occupational standards, training standards, programmes and curricula. It will endeavour to improve the quality and relevance of training provision and increase the number of certified skilled labourers in the identified sectors of employment. The project will train the ‘Trainers’ to bring coherence and uniformity and draft Occupational Standards which will serve as a basis to develop the qualification profiles in each sector. It will also work towards developing curricula for the formal sector.

The first key sector identified under this initiative will address the automotive sector (manufacturing and maintenance) in the following states- Maharastra/Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Orissa.

The project will be managed by a Steering Committee chaired by the Indian Ministry of Labour and Employment and will be implemented by a project task force. The technical assistance to the project will be provided by a consortium led by Cambridge Education in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale  Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (Germany), Aarhus Tech (Denmark), Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) (Scotland) and City and Guilds (C&G) (England).