In Narendra Modi’s visit on November 23-24, the country sees a chance to expand the collaboration to a national scale by dovetailing the ITE concept to PM Modi’s Skill India initiative.
Crouched under one of the five aircraft at the end of the tarmac, a bunch of students are busy taking lessons in conducting operational tests as part of their aerospace engineering course. At some distance is the maritime training centre, whose laboratory resembles an actual shipyard where students are trained in vessel fabrication and repairs.

The Institute of Technical Education (ITE), which offers 100 such vocational courses, has been carefully chosen for the sole site-visit during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Singapore trip this month.

Singapore plans to hard sell the ITE concept of vocational training, aligning it with Modi’s pet Skill India initiative.
“One of the paradoxes of India is that it has an educated population but not a skilled one. It is a common legacy of both Singapore and India left behind by the British, who looked down upon blue-collar jobs. We wanted to avoid the mistakes made by the British and Australians who upgraded their polytechnics to universities. Instead, we chose to emulate Switzerland and Germany and set up ITEs that produce craftsmen and skilled workers,” said a senior Singapore government official.
Earlier, the Singapore ITE had inked a deal with Delhi’s erstwhile Sheila Dikshit government to set up a hospitality and retail training centre in the capital.

It recently signed an MoU with the Rajasthan government for starting a tourism training centre in Udaipur’s existing government-run Industrial Training Institute.

In Modi’s visit on November 23-24, the country sees a chance to expand the collaboration to a national scale by dovetailing the ITE concept to PM Modi’s Skill India initiative.

“Most students in ITEs are from poor socio-economic backgrounds and almost 93 per cent of the fee is subsidised by the government. The idea behind the ITE is that you cannot divorce education system from the economic activity in the country,” said Suresh Natrajan, ITE deputy principal (development).

Skill development will be one of the five agenda points of Modi’s visit to the country, the others being promoting urban planning concepts, enhancing trade and investment, improving connectivity and increasing engagement with the states.