Ahead of G20 meet, India, Singapore deliberate on skilling practices, preparing future-ready workforce

Indian and Singaporeans delegates at a G-20 meeting here on Tuesday discussed best practices in skills and education adopted in the two countries and the way forward for preparing a future-ready workforce.

The deliberations come as part of a workshop on "Skill Architecture and Governance Models of India and Singapore" ahead of the third G20 meeting of Education Working Group.

According to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, India is discussing best practices in skills and education with Singapore and learning how to incorporate them in the Indian context as part of skilling students and making them job-ready.

"The way in which Singapore has included skills in its school education curriculum and is focusing on making its students job-ready is something that India wants to imbibe... India has technology and Edtech to offer in return. Future of jobs is going to be very different from what it is right now and we need to map the skills to make students job-ready," Pradhan said.

This joint workshop between India and Singapore focuses on leveraging the expertise and knowledge of Singapore and facilitate mutual sharing of experiences for addressing obstacles to skilling and further transforming the Indian skills ecosystem.

The delegates engaged in discussion on three major areas—development of new curriculum for skill, framework for skilling ecosystem in higher education and compulsory apprenticeship and frameworks for lifelong skilling.

"India and Singapore together can make welfare of the global community a reality.

I am confident that this joint workshop will provide actionable outcomes to create a new model of skilling which will fulfil aspirations and inspire youth across the globe," he said.

According to Ministry of Education officials, the outcomes of the joint workshop will show the way forward for creating a skill ecosystem in school by aligning Singapore's Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in existing higher education framework, developing new ecosystem for lifelong learning at a pan-India level.

"The meeting was focused on discussing how Singapore has included skill-based education at its school level and how it's helping its students become job-ready for the future. Lifelong learning and skill upgradation is also something that Singapore has been doing very well," said Sanjay Kumar, School Education Secretary.

Even as no Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with Singapore as yet, Kumar said that a possibility cannot be ignored in the future.

"We want to learn how Singapore is doing re-skilling and up-skilling and want to implement it in our country. Now that under the NEP 2020, skill can be introduced from class 6 onwards, we want to see how we can strengthen this," Kumar said.