BENGALURU: Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan held meetings with ISDC partners/stakeholders (such as IoA, WDC, SQA. etc) in the UK on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Education Conference in London.
The ISDC is the leading provider for British education and skills working with universities and professional bodies in the UK for expanding their reach and visibility internationally and have an active presence in India with an excess of 200 university partnerships.
With a massive presence in Karnataka, ISDC works with most private and deemed universities and autonomous colleges. The partnership also includes the Bangalore University and Mangalore University as state universities and several high-level alliances in the traditional education and higher education technology space. The ISDC signed a contract with Karnataka State Skill Development Corporation last year to teach finishing skills to nurses.
Dr Ashwath Narayan met with representatives from the Institutes of Analytics (IoA), Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and World Design Council (WDC) to discuss future collaborations in order to improve education and skills in Karnataka and to transform the state into a data-literate one. Representatives of professional bodies expressed interest in working collaboratively with the government to further develop the education sector in Karnataka.
The meetings I had with renowned professional bodies during a recent trip to the UK proved to be extremely useful. By bringing British education and skills to Karnataka, through collaboration with UK universities and professional Bodies, will not only assist our students to enhance their skills and expertise, but also enable them to explore career options. I appreciate ISDC’s efforts to bring British education and skills to Karnataka and its efforts to internationalise education.
—Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, Higher Education Minister
The team of IoA, a UK-based professional body for analytics and data science professionals worldwide, proposed to implement a special programme on data literacy specifically intended to help government employees in Karnataka improve their skills in analytics. Additionally, IoA proposed a specialised funded programme for selected 1,000 engineering graduates from government colleges in association with ISDC and a fully funded data literacy programme for schools.
In another meeting, the delegates from World Design Council (WDC), World Design Organisation (WDO), and UK Design Council, met the minister and proposed their plan pertaining to design thinking and expressed their interest to work with the Karnataka government. Ashwath Narayan reaffirmed the state’s interest in formulating and implementing a Design Policy for Karnataka. The state government will host the world’s largest design festival – “Bengaluru Design Festival” during the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2022, to be held in November.
Dr Ashwath Narayan also held an important meeting with the team of the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) and expressed his interest in exploring access to SQA in the Karnataka higher education system. He also supported SQA’s efforts in the internationalisation of education. SQA is responsible for developing, accrediting, assessing, certifying, and awarding qualifications other than university degrees. (ANI/NewsVoir)