Speed Post News Network
New Delhi : The Directorate General of Training (DGT), Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), has joined hands with Microsoft and NASSCOM Foundation to provide a digital content for ITI students and also future-ready employability skilling programme for upskilling and reskilling. Nearly 1,20,000 students in around 3,000 ITIs across India can benefit from this digitized e-learning module via the Bharatskills portal.
DGT in the last two years collaborated with many digital industry front liners like IBM India Pvt. Ltd., SAP India, Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd., Accenture Solutions and Quest Alliance, Adobe, SSC-NASSCOM etc., to enable the students to become industry ready.
The Directorate General of Training under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) is responsible for implementing long term institutional training to the nation’s youth through its extensive network of about 15,000 training institutes (ITIs) and 33 National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs), according to a PIB release.
Commenting on the initiative, Union Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Dr.Mahendra Nath Pandey, said, “Through the DGT-Microsoft partnership, we are aiming to impact thousands of students by enabling digitisation in education and hope it to reach more students and teachers soon. As the pandemic is compelling fast-track digital transition, these new learning initiatives will empower young learners with technical and market-oriented skills.”
DGT launched an online learning platform called the Bharatskills (https://bharatskills.gov.in) in October 2019, a Central Repository for skills providing easy access to the trainees and trainers of the ITI ecosystem, to access updated curriculum and course content of all courses under the Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS), Question Banks, mock/practice papers, learning videos, etc., hence enabling anytime, anywhere learning outside the classrooms.
It may be mentioned here that during the current COVID-19 pandemic scenario, the usage of Bharatskills learning platform has increased multifold from around 90,000 users in March 2020 to more than 16.55 Lakh users having accessed the portal as on date.
Speaking on the occasion, Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, “Empowering the next generation of learners with industry relevant digital skills is critical as we move towards building economic resilience. The last few months have accelerated the need for upskilling and has shown clearly that the future of learning will be supported by technology. Our partnership with DGT and NASSCOM Foundation is built on this foundation of equipping the learners of today with the skills required to thrive in the jobs of tomorrow.”
Another testimony to DGT’s relentless efforts is the recent MoU between Directorate General of Training, Microsoft, and NASSCOM Foundation wherein Microsoft has facilitated access to free content available on Microsoft Learn platform to over 24 Lakh students in the ITI ecosystem, by linking the Global Skilling Initiative (GSI) through the Bharatskills platform. Further, it is supporting the digitisation of the entire content of a popular course – ‘Computer Operating and Programming Assistant’ (COPA) through the NASSCOM Foundation.