Archive for the ‘Australia India Education Council’ Category
Australia willing to boost education ties with India
Australia will boost education and research collaboration with India to help it tide its demand for skilled workforce in the areas of faculty capacity building and curriculum renewal. “Australia is committed to strengthening education and training ties with India. Opportunities for Australia in India are vast,” Parliamentary Secretary for School Education Senator Jacinta Collins has told the inaugural Australia-India Institute (AII) conference held in Melbourne.
Collins, who was representing Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills Senator Chris Evans, also reaffirmed the strength of Australia and India’s bilateral education relationship. “India aims to increase its formally skilled workforce through vocational education and training from the current 12 per cent to 25 per cent by 2017 – an additional 70 million people in the next five years.
“Australia is well placed to help India achieve this objective. Providers and companies are already developing low cost models of quality Australian training provision in India,” she said. “India is looking for assistance from its international partners in a number of areas including in faculty capacity building, curriculum renewal, and provision of quality education and training to enable India to meet skilling targets. Australia, as a valued partner, is well placed to assist,” she said.
“Harmonising our education and training systems to increase student and staff mobility is also a key goal for both countries,” she added. Earlier, Evans had visited India with a delegation of Australian education and industry leaders for the annual Education Ministers Dialogue and to inaugurate the Australia India Education Council (AIEC).
The visit helped strengthen the bilateral relationship, with the governments discussing opportunities for education, training and research collaboration with India. The two governments also announced a range of new exchange programs for academics and college principals, and a new website to foster closer education and training collaboration.
In Australia, the senator said the government continued to implement measures to strengthen the international education sector including tighter controls on providers, an International Students Strategy and expanding the role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman to deal with international student complaints against private providers.
“These measures support the government’s recent reforms to enhance the integrity of the student visa program and refocus the skilled migration program to deliver the high value skills the Australian economy needs over the medium to long term,” Collins said. On September 22, Australia announced new visa rules to attract foreign students.
Source: The Times of India (Online Edition), October 13, 2011
Australia-India Education Synergies
Key priorities in education and training were identified at the inaugural meeting of the Australia-India Education Council (AIEC) on August 2 in New Delhi. The meeting was co-chaired by Chris Evans, senator and Australia’s minister for tertiary education, skills and jobs; and Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for human resource development.
The ministers also launched a new bilateral Australia India Education links website as an information portal which provides information on the roles and responsibilities of Australian and Indian education bodies, and hosts key reports.
Source: Education Times (The Times of India), August 8, 2011
Australia keen on upgrading education ties with India
Australia and India are moving towards a collaborative framework in education, under which universities from both countries will award joint degrees, recognise each other’s qualifications and have mutual transfer of academic credits. At the same time, Australia is keen on leveraging its vast experience and expertise in vocational training to fill the huge gap in the availability of skilled personnel in India.
Australia’s Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Christopher Evans, who visited the country in the past few days, mainly in connection with the first meeting of the Australia-India Education Council (AIEC), feels that his country’s engagement with India in the education sector is not just about Indian students studying in Australia but also about Australians pursuing part of their academic programme in Indian institutions.
“One of the barriers has been the lack of recognition of each other’s education and credit transfers. So, if someone comes from India and studies in Australia for six months, they may not get recognition for their Indian degree and vice-versa. We have identified this as a key thing we have to fix, because increasingly universities are interested in joint degrees,” Mr. Evans told The Hindu in an interview in Chennai.
“I am very keen on getting Australian students to study for about six months abroad, as it will open their eyes to the world. That is why, credit transfer is important. They will come if they know it counts for their degree, but not if their six months’ work is not credited,” he said. Citing the example of The Energy and Resources Institute of India (TERI), New Delhi, and Deakin University, Australia, establishing a BioNanotechnology Research Centre in Delhi, he said the two institutions had a successful joint programme, and more such partnerships were in the offing.
Skills transfer
Mr. Evans, who came with an academic and business delegation for the first AIEC meeting, said there was a lot of interest from the government and businesses in the field of vocational education. Leighton, an Australian infrastructure major, was running training programmes for Indian technicians in Delhi. “They are training Indians to [acquire] international and Australian qualifications for work, but don’t guarantee them a job. But the good thing is, it is a skills transfer involving industry — real skills valued by employers looking to meet international standards. That’s a great example of what we are doing in the vocational space.”
He did not see much scope for Australian universities to set up campuses in India, but felt that they would rather be looking for partnership models that would help Indian students get an international qualification. “A lot of Australian institutions provide qualification assessment, credit-rating and accreditation.”
A problem of scale
Mr. Evans did not see any great divergence in quality between the best Australian and Indian universities, but the problem in India was one of scale. It was a major challenge to meet the huge demand for skills and for education from such a large population. “Yours is a challenge of scale, not of quality; it is about spreading that quality across 500 million people who need to be trained.” On the importance Australia gave to education collaboration, he said: “We are very serious about making education one of the key pillars of our strategic partnership.”
Source: The Hindu, August 6, 2011
If Bill passed, foreign varsities can come next year, says Sibal
India’s Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said if the Foreign Education Providers Bill was passed in the current session of Parliament, such providers could set up campuses from the next academic session.
He was speaking at the inaugural session of Australia-India Education Council in the national capital, where around 15 vice-chancellors from Australia, led by Senator Chris Evans and Premier of South Australia Mike Ran, interacted with 14 vice-chancellors of India. The council, set up following a 2008 decision, will now make such an interaction between vice-chancellors an annual event.
The two sides, which discussed issues like credit transfer and student mobility, also tried to explore the area of vocational training. “We are looking at vocational collaboration,” Evans said. “We are very strong in vocational training.” The HRD Ministry is already considering adding vocational training as part of curriculum in schools, and a draft is being prepared in this regard. Pilot projects are already on in Haryana.
Among other issues discussed were security of Indian students in Australia, fake universities indulging in profiteering and visa fraud.
Source: The Indian Express, August 2, 2011
Australia-India Education Council discusses students’ mobility
The first meeting of the Australia-India Education Council saw extensive discussion on mobility of students between the two nations. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Monday, Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said student mobility could be ensured only if there was assurance regarding quality of education and if qualifications were recognised. Terming mobility of students as key to any successful collaboration between the two countries, the Minister said the two sides agreed on a number of issues during the bilateral talks.
About the issues under discussion with the visiting Australian delegation, Mr. Sibal said: “A whole range of issues were discussed between the Vice-Chancellors to ensure that quality education is imparted in the university system to allow student mobility.”
The Australia-India Education Council was conceived in April 2008, and that dream has been realised today, the Minister said, adding that the interaction of Vice-Chancellors was going to be an annual event. The delegation, led by Senator Chris Evans, comprised 15 vice-chancellors from different universities in Australia, including Premier of South Australia Mike Rann.
About the Indo-Australian collaboration, Mr. Sibal said: “Essentially, we are talking about collaboration in the field of education. We must have certain parameters which are common to both the jurisdictions (in India and Australia).” “The other area where both countries are extremely keen to collaborate is in the area of vocation… In an aging population, countries will need young people with skills and quality to immigrate to those countries. India can provide as a center for such quality human resource,” he said.
Replying to queries on security concerns of Indian students in Australia, Mr. Sibal said: “We had a full fledged discussion on the issues that are impacting and have impacted in the past, the Indian students going to Australia.” Expressing satisfaction over the steps taken by Australian government, he said: “We are happy that Australian government is taking specific steps in order to take care of their [Indian students’] security and have put systems in place and are addressing the issue in a very proactive manner.”
Source: The Hindu (Online Edition), August 1, 2011
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