Trainer deficit hindering vocational sector's growth

With its unique demography and desire for positive growth and change, India is experiencing an unparalleled surge for skills development.

India’s fast economic recovery and overall development has opened up an unprecedented number of job opportunities across industry sectors. 

Retail, Hospitality and BFSI are the fastest growing service sectors, with a 20 million trained manpower need projected in the next 5 years by the National Skills Development Report 2009.

The same report projects a demand of over 15 million skilled manpower in construction sector and 5 million in specialised sectors such as Auto and Hair & Beauty.

These sectors require very specialised trade knowledge as well as soft-skill sets such as customer relations, English language, communication and personal effectiveness.

Professional Skills Training aka Vocational Education (VE) is the only industry that can impart such job-oriented skills through short-term courses to this large pool of unskilled manpower. The government has already initiated a sequence of development schemes to boost our vocational training sector to meet the challenge of skilling an estimated 500 million people by 2022.

As an industry that has suffered neglect over the years, vocational education in India is experiencing a number of challenges and issues like lack of legitimacy, recognition, adequate nation-wide infrastructure and even a strong governing body to draft & implement adequate policy measures. One such major issue that needs to be addressed foremost is the non-availability of qualified trainers for delivering the skills qualifications for students.

Vocational Skills’ trainers are a very important link in establishing a strong skills training delivery system and acquiring experienced and skilled faculty is a big challenge in the current scenario. The seamless connect between theory and practical is one of the most important agenda in vocational training and the effective transfer of this training depends entirely on the trainer.

The trainer will be in constant contact with the learners and will understand their psyche, motivate them to learn and instill the confidence and skills needed to perform on their job effectively. Due to the practical & skills oriented nature of training it is also imperative to have industry experienced professionals delivering the qualifications rather than academicians without industry exposure.

A teacher’s skill is an acquired talent whereas the vast experience of an industry professional cannot be imbibed or imparted through any circumstance.  Engaging the best skilled trainers is of utmost importance in ensuring the proper empowerment of the nation’s unskilled manpower and enabling effective work performance.

The need for VE training in India is felt most in the semi-urban and smaller towns & cities but, the qualified experienced personnel capable of delivering training are mostly concentrated in urban tier I cities. This is most evident in Retail & Banking sectors wherein good professionals are difficult to locate on account of many modern banks & retail outlets operating from metro cities. In such situations the alternative is to ask them to relocate to smaller towns, an option more likely to be rejected on account of lifestyle & payscale in metros.

Another unique problem is locating field experienced trainers with requisite teaching skills to impart training to learners. This is particularly difficult in labour oriented sectors like AC & Refrigeration, Welding, Automobile maintenance etc. wherein getting a trainer knowledgeable in the subject is not an issue, but finding someone with strong teaching skills is almost next to impossible. Potential trainers for such sectors have sound technical knowledge, but lack in training skills which include understanding of pedagogy, session plans, classroom management, assessments etc.

Such challenges faced by skills training organisations across India are an indication of the fact that locating & training potential trainers is very crucial while executing skills development initiatives. The VE sector needs to institutionalise practices like Train-the-Trainer programmes, which can ensure that the trainer is fully equipped with the requisite knowledge of (repeat pedagogy) to deliver the course to learners.

These are usually intensive crash courses of 15 days and are structured to impart to the potential industry professional with the necessary qualities of a vocational trainer. The course will cover basic teaching qualities, student psychology and prepare the trainers for handling learners from varied backgrounds. The Train-the-Trainer programme will also certify the person as a qualified trainer, which further improves their credentials in the vocational training industry.

One possible solution is to identify and recruit retired or semi-retired industry professionals for training in semi-urban towns & cities. A majority of the urban working population migrates from semi-urban & small towns to the metros and tends to settle back in their respective home towns after retirement.

This is a huge untapped pool of industry experienced personnel who can take up part time or full time training opportunities to keep themselves engaged and contribute to improvement of the vocational training sector. The process of locating and recruiting such personnel can be a cumbersome one in the initial phase, but once skills training organisations have created a strong national database it will help serve as one of the strongest resources in establishing a nationwide training centre network.

In order for Vocational Education to play its part effectively in accomplishing the task of skilling India’s manpower, there is an urgent need to redefine the critical elements of training and make them flexible, contemporary, inclusive and creative.

The process of skills training cannot be perceived only as a means of transferring knowledge from the trainer to learner, it should also be progressive wherein industry experts participate, and render their knowledge and experience to the trainers. Having set the goal of imparting skills to the millions of Indian youth, the Vocational Education sector will need to have a strong pool of proficient trainers to help achieve this goal.

(The writer is CEO of IndiaSkills)