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September, DATAQUEST
 
German precision in HRD
 
There is a joke that goes around in Europe that a typical game of football is one where twenty two people kick the ball around for ninety minutes and at the end of the game Germany wins ! For any soccer fan, the truth of this statement does not need to be reinforced with Germany pulling off narrow victories against much fancied opponents time and again with their particular brand of efficiency and precision in playing the game.
A recent conversation in Berlin after watching their impressive win over Turkey in the central square of the city on a giant screen in the company of half a million frantic Germans and Turks revealed that this well thought out strategy and excellent execution pervades all aspects of German life and work. This is most apparent in the way the country has thought through its famous dual system of vocational education, a process that we have much to learn from even as Indian services industry faces the daunting prospect of preparing eight to ten million skilled services professionals every year, with at least a million of those in IT and BPO. Guided by the Vocational Training Act created in 1969 and updates in 2005, the responsibility for creating talent is shared by the firms, the training schools and the young people and administered by the eighty Chambers of Commerce and Industry that have ensured its implementation across all sectors of the German economy.
As in everything to do with Germany, the system permits adequate room for innovation within a prescribed framework that has seen a national decree established for every profession with over 350 training occupations recognised, of which 250 are in the field of industry, trade and services. The contents of the educational curriculum, the apprenticeship in the industry and the intermediate and final examinations for each profession have been specified with more than 170,000 professionals working on a honorary basis in the examination boards. With an investment of over twenty-seven billion euro on vocational training with an average cost per trainee of nearly eighteen thousand euro per year, the country can be justifiable proud of the results they have achieved which is becoming a benchmark for the rest of the world.
Talking to a cross-section of participants in the vocational education eco-system, the role of each player becomes apparent. The employers participate in the system with adequate time and some monetary commitment from their side because it enables them to build talent within the firm which they prefer to a training levy ( we call it education cess ) which would otherwise have been imposed, the training schools have been successful in building a high quality standard and are now aligning with the EQF ( European Qualifications Framework) to enable participants and training in all parts of the EU, the students see this stream as a high reward process that provides them monetary independence at an early age and the Government itself is providing its full backing because of the inherent employment and social benefits that have already begun to show results for the German economy.
The IT training streams in vocational education have a lot in parallel to the formal system in India and indeed the yeoman efforts done by APTECH and NIIT in the early years of private sector participation in IT training with the basic IT operator courses having been enhanced to enable specialist professions like application development, systems integration, electronics technicians and IT economists for commercial applications to be developed. With an option of three days at work and two days in class every week or a sandwich program where every week of intensive courses is followed by two weeks work in the participating company, the training rigour is maintained and seen as superior to the standard training school process supported by a few projects in the industry which has been the Indian model of education.
If our efforts at resource creation on a national scale have to succeed, it will need the same intensity of efforts in the eleventh five year plan to encourage Public Private partnerships that will build resources for the IT and BPO sector as well as all the other services professions in the country. The moribund state of the ITIs which are only now being focused on by worthy associations like the CII should not be the fate of services education and this will need NASSCOM and the State Governments to develop processes and programs and private sector to work in concert  to address the enormous challenge. Maybe then we will see consistent success in the economy like the consistent German football team and not just streaks of individual brilliance that continues to characterise Indian cricket even today !
 
   
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