My first Magazine Skilletts_ January 2018 | Page 2

Greetings to all ...
am extremely happy to inform you all that, we are entering in to a new vista of
I skilling
wherein ASAP would be offering skilling programmes to all Keralites who are
less than 25 years of age. The concept of “educational age” put forth by ASAP was
approved by the 17 th Empowered Committee, which is nothing but the age up to which a
person generally gets support from parents for undergoing formal or informal education, the
age up to which the society generally approves the person as a student and also the age up to
which students generally experiment with their career options. The Summer Skill Skool, 2018
would witness the launch of this changed strategy. In the “Regular programme” we will be
utilising the facilities available at SDCs and OJT
centres for skilling this group, who
otherwise are not part of any current academic stream. The drop outs from B.Tech. courses
could be one of our important target group with a pre-test on Recognition of Prior Learning
[RPL].
The Public Sector Undertakings [PSUs] in Kerala could be the ideal sites for skilling
ASAPians, as some of the PSU units are highly resourced to render hands-on training to our
students. A social intervention of this sort might improve the quality of output of our PSUs
as well. Though small, the retruns from ASAP could be a help for the PSUs in terms of free
internship, rents for the SDCs to be set up and honorarium for the employees who could be
the trainers on practical classes. The 17 th Empowered Committee has given the mandate to
explore this possibility and talks are already on with Kerala Automobile Limited [KAL] in
these lines.
The “Competency Framework” of ASAP certificate holders has been a worrying
factor as even the NSQF “Level 4” certificate holders are not getting good placements citing
their low level of competency. This need to be changed and the change could be by aligning
the academic progression of a student with a corresponding skill progression. A detailed
plan has been formulated as part of proposed “Additional Skill Acquisition Academy”,
wherein the “Level 1” skilling will be introduced from class IX onwards with an yearly
progression culminating at “Level 7” when the students completes his B.Sc./B.A./B.Com, and
“Level 8” when he/she completes B.Tech./B.Sc.[Agri]/B.V.Sc./M.B.B.S./B.D.S./B.Sc[Nursing]
etc. The plan is in tune with Kerala Government’s Pothu Vidhyabhyasa Samrakshana
Yagnam and Government of India’s directive of introducing the NSQF from IX th standard
onwards.
The society demands more from ASAP and we must live up to its expectation
through streamlining of our activities to productively mould our future generations.
Wish you all a challenging year ahead
Dr. D Sajith Babu IAS
CEO, ASAP
Skilletts— January– 2018
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