Irish online training company ALISON has concluded a deal with the National Skills Development Corporation of India to provide courses and expertise as part of the country’s efforts to provide skills and training under the banner of the government’s ‘Skills India’ initiative.

The agreement includes the unveiling of a new skills development website called IndiaSkillsOnline which will map revised, self-paced learning resources to industry learning needs defined by the India Sector Skills Councils as ‘qualification packs’.

Rajiv Mathur of the NSDC said that the partnership with ALISON is an exciting development for the Indian skills development sector. He added: “Working together, the NSDC and ALISON can advance skills training to a whole new generation of learners at a scale and depth not possible until now. Free access to learning, via every device, whether desktop or mobile, is essential to make India the skills capital of the world in line with the ambitions of our prime minister.”

ALISON CEO Mike Feerick said: “We are delighted to be working with the NSDC. We share high ambitions and a similar social contract to up-skill millions of workers across India. Together, we can reach new standards of learning achievement, driving economic activity of the India people at home and abroad.”

Free Courses

The vocational education and training portal will provide an avenue through which students will be able to study free courses towards national standard qualifications. The package includes “pre-departure” courses to prepare Indian migrants for living and working in the Middle East. The courses, which introduce Arabic cultural norms and language, are taught through both English and Hindi, and will shortly be available in other Indian languages.

In Association with

Galway-based ALISON provides free online certified learning and skills training for the workplace. Seven million students already use its services, and the company says 250,000 more register every month. It has over 800,000 graduates globally, and includes courses as diverse as psychology and enterprise, patient care and customer service, journalism and C# programming.

A for-profit social enterprise, ALISON has over one million registered learners in the USA, UK and India. It adds new course offerings weekly, driven by demand from learners and employers seeking time and cost efficient ways of upskilling their staff.

Its stated goal is to drive the costs of education and skills training to zero at an individual learner level including learning, certification, learner management, assessment, verification and publishing. The company has received awards for its work in making education more accessible to all, including a UNESCO Award for Innovation in ICT for Education in 2011 and a World Innovation Summit for Education Award (WISE) in 2013.