What do we do / Services - Government Services

Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development in a country. As opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal vocational skills.

A comprehensive program to train and develop industrial, entrepreneurial skills among Indians was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 15, 2015. The program is called ‘Skill India.’

The move to tap potential of India is unprecedented in the country’s history. Skill India is today a major project that involves every segment of the Indian society, local and foreign companies and governments

Skill India program will equip and train the nation’s massive, enviable workforce with employable skills and knowledge. This will help them contribute substantially to India’s industrialization and economic boom.

Over 400 million women and men in the country will be trained in various industrial and trade skills by the year 2022. Skill India program was launched on July 15, 2015 to enable Indian economy and industry to benefit from the country’s young work force.

IAssess has partnered with the National Skill Development Council and the Sector Skill Councils to conduct ethical transparent and process-driven assessment of the candidates trained under the various schemes of the Skill India Mission. You can know more here

Success Stories

 CASE 1 : MESC RPL FOR FILM MAJDOOR UNION

Background: Hindi film industry also known popularly as Bollywood employs many thousands of artisans, artists and support staff and has grown into a full-fledged industry on its own. Apart from the actors that we see on the movie and TV screens, there are a huge number of experts who work in the background to make the film projects successful. While these people have years of on-the-job experience in performing their tasks and duties, they don’t have a course or certificate to prove their knowledge and experience. This limits their career growth and opportunities and as the premier council for the Media and Entertainment industry, MESC embarked on a massive project to provide certificates to these deserving people under the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) scheme. In February 2019, Media and Entertainment Skills Council approached us to assess 45000+ members of Film Mazdoor Union in Mumbai under the said RPL scheme.

The Challenge:
  • The scope and size of the project was huge to begin with. There are 28 recognised unions/associations for the different categories of workers and the council wanted to cover all of them under the scheme.
  • The industry is largely unorganized with everyone working as freelancers, which meant that essential documents like Aadhar Card, bank details, Pan Card etc. were not available.
  • The task became all the more arduous as most of the members of these associations are less educated and tech-savvy. We had to assess carpenters, painters, spot boys, lighting assistants, plumbers, etc. on a mass scale.
The Solution:
  • A team was constituted to understand the project complications in detail and chart the roadmap for effective and time-bound execution.
  • A 24 member staff was deployed in the Association’s office for 45 days to organize a drive to collect and upload candidates’ Aadhar card, bank document and photo as well as complete their assessment.
  • A high-speed internet facility was arranged at the venue for speedy upload of documents and assessment results to IAssess portal.
  • Repeated drives were conducted through whatsapp messages and phone calls as well as contact programs to sensitize the members about the scheme and its benefits.
  • 15 member backend team was engaged for upload of these documents on SDMS portal and register the candidates under the scheme.

The project was successfully completed after a tireless effort of 2 months by the whole team.

 CASE 2 : ASSESSMENT OF SCHOOL BATCHES

Background: The scheme of “Vocationalisation of Higher Secondary Education”, approved in Sep 2011, was revised with the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Skill Development on 12.02.2014 renaming the scheme as “Vocationalisation of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education” and bringing it under the umbrella of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA).

The scheme envisages the introduction of vocational education from Class IX onwards in Govt. schools. Since the scheme focuses on the knowledge and skills required for a particular job in the market, the students become job ready. The knowledge acquired through market demand based job roles and trades are very helpful for students who are not interested in higher studies, rather looking for employment after completion of intermediate level. In between the studying of 4 levels, the students can take up internships which provide them stipend and get the ground level working and practical knowledge.

The Challenge:
  • The assessments were spread across the states of Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Goa and Maharashtra. The schools were located in remote villages with very difficult travelling routes coupled with adverse weather conditions. Additionally, the candidates in the southern states were comfortable mostly in the local languages and there was an absence of adequate educational facilities making conducting these assessments very challenging.
  • We were required to translate the questions and task sheets into regional languages.
  • Students were of different caliber and had been taught quite differently in different schools. There was no uniform curriculum followed. To quote an example, for the course of Physical Fitness Trainer, students had been trained on many different sports ranging from Kho-Kho to Football to Hockey and Basketball. So the assessors had to be conversant with all these sporting games and their nuances.
  • Assessments in all the states had to be conducted simultaneously within a span of 30 days, thus necessitating conduct of simultaneous assessments in all the states through a small team of qualified assessors.
The Solution:
  • Qualified (B.Ped & M.Ped) & Certified local assessors were deployed in each state and scheduled for back-to-back daily assessments. Rigorous assessment schedules were prepared to ensure that the assessments are planned district-wise to avoid unnecessary time loss due to long travelling by the assessors.
  • An internal team of 8 members were assigned specifically to this project for a period of 45 days to ensure that the assessments are conducted within the timelines.
  • Rigorous monitoring was employed to ensure that assessment of all the candidates was conducted correctly the first time and all documents were collected and recorded as per process requirement. This ensured submission of timely, fair and reliable results to the councils.
  • Scenarios for practical and viva assessments were standardized to offer level playing field to all the students. These scenarios were more focused on the sporting etiquettes and playing attitude than on specific rules of the different games.

IAssess feels honoured to have been part of this incredible scheme to inculcate skill development in school students right from a young age and help them direct their efforts in a more focused and consistent manner to develop it into a meaningful career opportunity.

 CASE 3 : OUR VERY FIRST ASSESSMENT AT PARLEKHEMUNDI

Background: Paralakhemundi is a town in the south-east of the Indian state of Odisha. It is on the banks of Mahendratanaya river. Paralakhemundi is the south-east most town of Odisha sharing its border with Andhra Pradesh. The town is located on a hilly terrain. The climate is subtropical with high humidity.

The Challenge:
  • We have included this assessment in our success stories as this was the very 1st batch that was assigned to us as a pilot by Telecom Sector Skill Council in Dec 2015. The town is located in a remote end of Odisha with very poor transport facility. Apart from a few local state transport buses and couple of trains running on a separate broad-guage railway line, there is no other alternative to reach the town. It is very far from the bigger cities and towns of Odisha like Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, etc.
  • The other challenge was also that our assessors were based in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. Travelling to such a remote location at a short notice was not possible for them.
  • The candidates were comfortable in only Odiya language. Our question papers were available in English and Hindi languages only.
  • Lastly, the town had poor internet network connectivity and frequent disruptions in network availability.
The Solution:
  • We realized that the only way to conduct the assessment within the given timelines was to find a local assessor from Berhampur, Odisha which was the nearest big town. There were also more frequent travel options from this town. After a lot of efforts identifying people from this town with an expertise in the job role, we forwarded and took approval from TSSC to empanel a local youth as the assessor for this batch.
  • The question paper was quickly translated to Odiya language and uploaded on our server for conducting the assessment.
  • We asked our assessor to arrange for smartphones equipped with Android 4.0 and above, so that this could be kept as a back-up option in case of internet connectivity problems.
  • The platform was suitably modified to ensure that internet connectivity was needed only for downloading and uploading of question papers. The actual assessment could happen in an offline mode at the center. This helped us in multiple ways:
    • Firstly, this took care of the internet problem at the location
    • Secondly, we activated the batch only at 10:00 am on the day of the assessment. So even the assessor could see the questions only when the assessment was started. Hence any kind of malpractice was avoided.
    • Lastly, we could monitor from the admin panel about the progress of the assessment

Due to all these steps taken, we could conduct the assessment on the scheduled day in an ethical and transparent manner without any inconvenience to any stakeholder.

 CASE 4 : CONDUCT OF ASSESSMENT IN MIZORAM

Background: In January 2016, we were assigned a batch in Lawngtlai village in Mizoram by the Telecom Sector Skill Council. We were told that assessment of this batch had been postponed four times earlier and it was important that the assessment was conducted this time without fail.

The Challenge:

We soon realized the reason for the frequent postponement of this assessment.

  • Lawngtlai district is located in the southwestern most part of Mizoram having international boundaries with Bangladesh to the west and Myanmar to the south. The location is so remote that it would take an assessor more than 20 hours to reach from the state capital.
  • Connectivity is a huge problem here as the only way to reach this district is through bus services from the state capital Aizawl. These buses depart in the morning so that they reach Lawngtlai by late evening.
  • The district is situated in mountainous terrain and experiences poor internet connectivity.
  • The batch had only 17 candidates and most of them also live in villages which are far off from Lawngtlai. It was unclear how many of them would be able to actually come for the assessment.
The Solution:
  • We identified a domain assessor living in Aizawl who was well qualified to do the assessment. We took special permission from council to depute him as the assessor
  • The last bus leaves at 2:00 pm and our assessor missed the bus as he did not get transport from his town Kolasib to Aizawl. We found that private helicopter service was the only way now for him to reach the assessment center in time. We hired a seat in a commercial helicopter for him and he reached Lawngtlai on the previous night itself.
  • The assessor was asked to carry 6 smartphones for the assessment. Internet was required only to download and upload the assessment data.
  • Inspite of the training partner repeatedly calling the candidates for the assessment, only 5 candidates actually came for the assessment.

We are glad that we could complete the assessment in very difficult circumstances.