First Australia India Education and Skill Council (AIESC) meeting to be held tomorrow at IIT Gandhinagar
The First Australia India Education and Skill Council (AIESC) meeting will be held tomorrow at IIT Gandhinagar. The AIESC, earlier the Australian India Education Council (AIEC), is a bi-national body established in 2011 to guide the strategic direction of the education, training and research partnerships between the two countries. The scope of this forum was enhanced in alignment with the national priorities of both countries to bring focus on promoting internationalisation, two-way mobility and collaboration in the domains of education as well as the skill ecosystem.
This is for the first time that education and skilling is being brought under the same institutional forum. The visit is expected to foster collaboration, participation and synergy in critical areas of mutual interest in the education and the skill domain. The meeting will be jointly chaired by Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India, Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, Government of Australia, and Hon’ble Mr. Brendan O’Connor, Minister for Skills and Training, the Government of Australia.
This meeting will provide a platform for academic and skill experts to discuss a wide range of mutually agreed priorities, with the ultimate aim of shaping the future of education and skilling in both our nations. The discussions will follow the key three themes of shaping future workforces, strengthening institutional partnerships in education and driving research impact through internationalisation. The meeting will be attended by senior government officials from India and Australia along with heads of Higher Education Institutions and skill sectors from both the countries.
The ministers will be visiting key institutions to identify critical themes for collaboration. This includes visits to Centre for Creative Learning, IIT Gandhinagar, which works on nurturing scientific temper and the inherent creativity in students and teachers through creation of tools, dissemination of ideas focussing on STEM art, Toys, setting up of Science centres and Lab work at IIT Gandhinagar. The ministers will also be visiting Pandit Deendayal Energy University (PDDU) and Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK). PDDU was established to keep pace with the fast developing and competitive energy industry, to plan for the future and to continuously build requisite intellectual capital and human resource skills. The Vidya Samiksha Kendra aims to reinforce National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) goals, is an institutional setup that enables integrated and shared ‘seeing’ for amplifying data-based decision making and action by key stakeholders for academic and non-academic activities and thereby improving learning outcomes.
The two-day programme also includes a visit by Shri Dharmendra Pradhan and Hon Jason Clare MP to Gift City site visits of Deakin University and University of Wollongong campuses and Arambh (the beginning): Australian University campuses in India. A key feature of the second day interaction is a discussion on Research Dialogue: New Horizon in Research Collaboration. The interaction is expected to identify innovative opportunities for deepening bilateral research collaborations in a thriving research ecosystem through industry partnerships, research workforce and strategies. It will also aim to facilitate research networks across chose disciplines between the two countries.
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