Recently approved by Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Skills Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for livelihood Promotion (SANKAlP) and Skills Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement (STRIVE) are all set to boost the Skill India Mission in the country.
SANKAlP is Rs 4455 crore centrally sponsored project including Rs 3300 crore support from World Bank whereas STRIVE is a Rs 2200 crore - central sector project, with half of the project outlay as World Bank assistance. SANKAlP and STRIVE are outcome focused projects marking a shift in government’s implementation strategy in vocational education and training from inputs to results building in a strong shift to an outcome based skill ecosystem.
The need for a national architecture for promoting convergence, ensuring effective governance and regulation of skill training and catalysing industry efforts in vocational training space has been long felt. Aiming at the objective, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship had already introduced several initiatives to ensure quality in skill training like accreditation through SMART portal, Centralised Assessment and Certification system, ISO certification of the ITIs, transition to online testing in some States etc. The introduction of these projects like SANKAlP and STRIVE will catapult these reforms across the country up to the District level.
SANKAlP shall address this need by setting up national bodies for accreditation and certification. The bodies shall regulate assessment and certification in both long and short term vocational education and training (VET). The architecture shall help, for the first time in the history of vocational education in India, to converge the efforts of various Central, State and private sector institutions thereby avoiding duplication of activities and brining about uniformity in vocational training thus, creating better impact.
Both the projects are aimed at institutional reforms and improving quality and market relevance of skill development training programmes in long and short- term VET. STRIVE aims to modernise 500+ ITIs through outcomes and reform linked funding. Rating as per grading framework- a benchmark for comparison among the various ITIs, would be the eligibility criteria for selection of ITIs. STRIVE will also support 100+ select private ITIs to scale to world class standards.