28/08/2019 - Indian Economy | Mainstorming

Anu 6 years

Kindly review. Thank you.

Apprenticeship.pdf

IAS Parliament 6 years

Good attempt. Try to add data in challenges part. Keep Writing.

IAS Parliament 6 years

KEY POINTS

· Apprenticeship act 2014 constituted apprenticeship councils and advisors, and placed a statutory obligation on employers to engage apprentices with a stipend and in the ratio prescribed for designated trades.

· The composition of the workforce changed. Employment in the primary sector (largely, agriculture) reduced from 76% to 46%, while increasing in the secondary sector from 11% to 23%.

· Finally, MSMEs grew exponentially from ten million enterprises in 2003 to 46 million in 2014 with an estimated employment of 106 million.

· The amendments also have an express provision for an IT platform to act as an interface between stakeholders and apprentices for compliance and monitoring purposes.

· By 2014, the apprenticeship model had run out of steam. Its transformation from moribund to dynamic was kickstarted by a large-scale amendment of the Act in December 2014, followed by the introduction of the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) in 2016.

· The Central Apprenticeship Council also carried out reforms in 2019 to expand apprenticeship opportunities. In the last five years, a sea of change has occurred.

Challenges

· Apprenticeships have stagnated between 2000-2014 due to the challenges created by the 1961 Act and stood at 0.28 million in 2014.

· Administratively, a complex workflow for engagement of apprentices by companies implied that MSMEs abstained from participating due to limited administrative capacities.

· The threat of a penalty reduced any chances of a partnership between the private sector and the Government.

· For the apprentice too, the attractiveness remained limited, in terms of the stipend offered and progression opportunities.

· Finally, the improper dissemination of the benefits of apprenticeships led to training being perceived as less aspirational than a general education. No attempt was made to correct this perception.

· The challenges of awareness, lack of a progression pathway, absence of an integrated credit framework, the not-so-clear value proposition for certifications and training capacity shortages remain, which the industry can support to address.

The government and industry stakeholders/SSCs need to jointly promote apprenticeships as a powerful learning tool.