Blog of an open fiction writer and educationalist

Man’s quest for finding out another inhabited planet and living beings in it is, perhaps, older than the evolution of any science. Nowadays, one of the hidden hope behind all space exploration missions is the possibility of finding out extraterrestrial life. Every space scientist cherishes this hope. All very rudimentary data with respect to the possibility of a congenial environment for life (in the past, present or future) that is being sent to home by satellites and rovers become big news – which indicates the interest of mankind in this topic. Later in this series of developments, NASA recently released information on the closest and the older cousin of the Earth. NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first ‘near-Earth-size’ planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star.

In these attempts, even the discovery of a microbe will be counted as a big progress. I also strongly believe that, we (the mankind) is not alone in this universe. But the problem is that most of our sear…

The first digital equipment I owned was a wristwatch with digital display during the last part of 1980s or in the beginning of 1990s, I don’t remember the exact time. The very second day of my possession of the same, I opened it with much enthusiasm to find out some cuter machinery than the cute wheels that were either rotating clockwise or anticlockwise or just oscillating in my grand old HMT watch. But disappointing me a lot, it shown up only a hard and white plastic kind of material with a steel button like battery. Even though that poor thin digital watch put in much sincere efforts to impress me by displaying hours, minutes and seconds, I decided to give it up. Because, I wanted to hold the cute hour-minute-second hands and wheels of my old HMT watch with me.

A lot of people seemed to have thought on the same lines. Consequently the digital watch boom of those times faded away in around three-four years and the watches that were sold for many hundreds of rupees per piece initial…

In the last blog I presented skill development as a special purpose vehicle within the TVET ecosystem. Now I would like to suggest some of the ways in which TVET can internalize the dynamism and the best practices from the skill development initiatives.

Many countries now have Sector Skill Councils that look after the skill development requirements of specific industrial sectors. Generally, these councils are industry led organizations. One of the standard practices that the sector skill councils brought into the TVET ecosystem is developing occupational standards and qualification packs with respect to various job roles in industries.

At present skill development programmes are being designed based on the qualification packs developed and notified by the sector skill councils. What actually the sector skill councils do in this process is listing out the major functions of each job role in the industry, mapping the competencies required for effective and efficient delivery of each such …

Industry specific skill development based on the skill gaps reported by the employer industries is now a priority initiative across the globe. It triggers a natural query in many minds: ‘why do we need separate skill development programmes while there are TVET programmes?
 According to UNESCO’s international centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNEVOC) “Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work. It replaces all the earlier terms used, which include:  Apprenticeship Training, Vocational Education, Technical Education, Technical-Vocational Education (TVE), Occupational Education (OE), Vocational Education and Training (VET), Professional and Vocational Education (PVE), Career and Technical Education (CTE), Workforce Education (WE), Workplace Education (WE), etc.
From the above definition, we can see that TVET is all encompassing. Now, the question ‘why do we need separate…