One of the fundamental principles that will guide the education system include multidisciplinary and a holistic education across the sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, and sports for a multidisciplinary world to ensure the unity and integrity of all knowledge. For developing holistic individuals, it is essential that an identified set of skills and values will be incorporated at each stage of learning, from pre-school to higher education.

NEP 2020 marks a revolutionary change in the existing ecosystem by integrating skilling, industry connect and employability in schools and higher education institutions. The policy has signalled a need of new education system by shifting learning-based to skill-based education system, essential to equip workforce with 21st century skills and increase employability potential of higher education programs.

The NEP also aims to improve the quality of education by making it more relevant and engaging for students. It also encourages holistic education through the provision of research internships and practical learning to improve the employability of students. To accomplish this, the policy recommends a shift away from rote learning and towards a more holistic, student-cantered approach to teaching and learning. This includes the use of experiential and inquiry-based methods, as well as the incorporation of local knowledge and cultural practices into the curriculum. Further, the new holistic approach that the NEP brings about gives the ed-tech industry a new space to explore and grow in, creating more and more employment opportunities in the country.

NEP also places a strong emphasis on the importance of teacher training and development. It calls for the establishment of professional development programs for teachers, as well as the creation of a more supportive and collaborative working environment. The policy also recommends the use of technology to improve teacher training and to provide teachers with access to the latest research and best practices in education.

To actualise the vision of well-rounded leaders for 21st Century, the target of Industry Academia linkages to be scaled up to 50% of HEIs by 2030 from 10% of HEIs and eventually reaching 100% of HEIs by 2047. Similarly, the number of start-ups incubated in around 4600 HEIs to be scaled to 15,000 HEIs by 2030 and by 2047 it is targeted at 1,00,000 HEIs. Further the Students’ Skill readiness for industry is targeted at 75% of students by 2030 and by 2047 it is targeted at 100% of students.

Activity roadmap for 2022-23 for actualise the vison of ‘Well rounded leaders for 21st Century’ will include:

• Embed talent-driven student learning: Increase focus on identifying and nurturing students’ potential across academic and non-academic learning areas, and tailor instruction to help them develop their abilities.
• Make holistic learning a community-led priority: Mobilize parents and community collectives to proactively partake in and create avenues within communities for the holistic development of children.
• Establish institutions as hubs of innovation: Create pathways for strengthened industry and academia linkages through the ‘Professors of Practice’ model – allowing industry experts to teach and mentor students, and promote on-campus incubation of start-ups through by creating research and development cells and designing experiential, on-the-job learning models.

Activity Roadmap for 2030-2047 include:

• Actualize talent dividend of students: Help students to actualize their abilities across areas of learning and emerge as thriving leaders, contributing significantly to efforts, such as science, sports, and culture.
• Champion holistic learning outcomes through communities: Collaborate with the Ministries of Panchayati Raj, and Rural and Urban Development to make cognitive, socio-emotional, and value-based education the responsibility of local governments and community collectives.

These activity roadmaps are to be supported by enabling environment like:

• Reimagine the learning agenda and enable students to thrive: Integrate socio-emotional learning and key industry 4.0 skills into the curriculum, equip teachers and caregivers to support children and youth to meaningfully absorb these learnings, and empower all learners to be environmentally responsible, and develop into strong global and national citizens.
• Weave adaptive career pathways: Develop the National Credit Framework with multiple, non-linear pathways recognizing prior learning, and integrate both general & vocational education while ensuring mobility of candidates between the two systems.

Government has introduced Guidelines for enhancing HEI-industry connect through Professors of Practice to integrate industry experts in developing curriculum and learning modules. The government has also released guidelines for internships/apprenticeships embedded degree programs and at present 94 HEIs are offering apprenticeship/internship programs. Presently, 10,560 HEIs and 71,883 industries are registered on the Single Unified Internship Portal. Collectively, this portal is providing 28.93 lakh internships. Overall NEP is focusing on holistic education through the integration of skilling, industry connect, and employability by helping students in acquiring various skills to meet the needs of the industries and improving the quality of education.

14.1 Expected Outcomes of the Session

The session would provide a platform for engaging over the integration of skilling, industry, and employability through following aspects:

• Pathway for HEIs to capitalize on industry connect for developing course offerings with practical component for students.
• Scope of inclusive participation, including skill training and improved employability of women and differently abled students in industry.
• Improvements in overall industry exposure and work-ready skill levels through internships, apprenticeships, workshops, guest lectures, etc.
• Leveraging technology and public digital infrastructure to improve the available opportunities for skilling and employability.
• An understanding of scope of convergence of various schemes

14.2 Roadmap for the Institutes

• Promote work integrated training programs: To provide students with hands-on experience and making them employability ready with industry specific skills, the institutions should increase the practical component in the curriculum along with promoting on-the-job trainings.
• Leverage corporate trainings outside of corporations: By pairing elements from best-of-class corporate programs with a government-led national policy framework, institutions and industry can jointly help establish a high-quality national skills development program.
• Promote women’s participation in skills training programmes: There is need to accelerate the skilling for women to enable the transition of women from farming to non-farming professions. This will require a concerted and targeted efforts to skill women for higher ability jobs both by the academic institutions and industries.
• Identification of best practices in vocational education and training: Identification of best practices with focus on specific criteria that can be replicated in different institutions in the relevant areas and shared at various levels to promote effectiveness in pedagogical and other aspects of implementation of VET.
• Inclusive learning: Develop strategies to make tech-enabled learning more inclusive, leverage open learning resources and more importantly develop digital public infrastructure to make e-learning more inclusive.
• Future Skills: Adoption of comprehensive strategies for integrating future skills in the workforce and promote lifelong learning. Development of real time and dynamic skill gap assessments with the help of rapidly evolving technological prowess like Big Data analytics etc. to uncover skill trends at a very granular level.