Lighthouse for Vocational Education and Training
Congratulations to the Indo-German Training Centre (IGTC) and Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) on their Silver Anniversary!
It has not only been 25 years of delivering skills through high dedication, global-level training quality and German perfection; it’s not only about sparking enthusiasm, self- confidence and pride in the students and successfully paving their way onto the labour market with best prospects, from my point of view, it has been a visionary step to implement a shining example for a unique skilling system in India for which the Chamber, IGTC and the participating companies can be proud of.
Starting with the liberalization of the Indian economy, German and Indian companies together with their Chamber demonstrated how to reap the advantages of free markets by delivering proper skills to the young people striving to excel in their careers.
When it comes to discussing role models for Indian skill development, IGTC programmes could be misunderstood as they are post graduate programmes. However, in reality they are fully based on the German Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. It is a wonderful example how to evolve a dual structure by combining shop floor learning in the companies and vocational education in a private or public school or a training institute. And from the placement rates after those programmes of IGTC, it is evident how relevant such a dual VET is, in delivering a market oriented and demand driven training even to graduates.
Germany and India have a long standing cooperation in VET. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, have emphasized the high priority of this cooperation. The Prime Minister named Germany a “natural partner” in this field. During the last Governmental Consultations in October 2015 a memorandum was signed, which is being implemented in a number of programmes and projects in the Joint Working Group of VET.
I am very grateful to the contributions of the IGCC and their members for this cooperation and would like to mention two other initiatives: the VETnet project in Pune, which has been set up and is supporting a cluster of small and medium sized companies to engage themselves, in their own interest in qualifying and training their staff. And the initiative of examining and certification of training activities on the word-class level of the German system.