Studying the Impact of Government’s Employability Enhancement Drive Finishing School on Tribal Students of College at South Gujarat Region in India

Description

The Student Employability Enhancement Drive aims, at empowering students with various Skill sets in addition to Knowledge that make them industry ready. FS trainers enable students to polish up their Life Skills, Employability Skills, Functional and Spoken English Skills so as to be the notable part of building New India and Stronger and better world. FS aims to prepare Graduating students of Gujarat for better employability, Industry readiness and a prosperous career through appropriate training interventions. The vision goes a step further beyond Gujarat to spread this progressive initiative of FS throughout India. The present study is directed towards knowing impact of the Finishing School on students of tribal college. The ultimate aim is if a student in Gujarat state graduates from college, with their university degree, they should be better prepared to enter the work force then they were prior to entering the higher education. Education Department, government of Gujarat provides financial assistance to government and grant-in–aid colleges for execution of the training. It is functional through Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (KCG). KCG appoints trainers the list is displayed on the website of KCG and each college is having the liberty to choose trainers from the given list. These trainers are paid from the FS financial assistance grants availed to the colleges by the state government. Training coordinator is appointed by the college from among the existing faculty members of the college. The college coordinator provides free of charge services to the FS project. He/ She coordinates with the trainers and students, equally strives for effective execution and outcome of the program. Training was functional online amidst the Covid crisis. Government of Gujarat launched FS in year 2016-17, the beneficiaries were 40 Government colleges of the Gujarat state, 20 Higher Education and 20 Technical Institutes. Till 2022 around 140 Government colleges of the Gujarat state, 20 Higher Education and 120 Technical Institutes were added. 2021-22 other 87 government and 100 Grant –in- Aid colleges were covered under the FS project. By now more than 253 colleges are executing the project following the module with four components as shown in the Table 1.

Steps to reproduce

Since participating in the training is on a voluntary basis, students who wanted to participate were taken into the sample. Out of 1500 students enrolled at the school, 213 agreed to participate. Among 213 students 70 (32.9%) were male and 143 (67.1%) were female. The students rated their capability on five-point scale (Lacking "1", Average "2", Good "3", Very Good "4" and Excellent "5"). Before the training, the Employability Enhancement Measuring Scale (EEMS), which includes 20 items, was applied to these students. With this scale, students' exposure to FS was measured. The data obtained from this scale were named as Pre-training. After the training was completed, the same scale was reapplied to the same students and the obtained data was named as Post-training. Whether there was a difference between the scores given to the scale before and after the training was examined by the Paired Samples t-test, both on the basis of item and on the basis of total values. At the same time, it was examined whether gender had an effect on Pre and Post scores. Following questionaree was given to the students for pre and post test. Question 1. Ability to recognize self-esteem and built/increase confidence level; 2. Clarity on idea of life and professional goals; 3. Knowing presentable body language and awareness in personal grooming; 4. Willingness for participation in group discussion and readiness for facing interviews; 5. Capability of understanding others and improving interpersonal relations; 6. Knowing ways of introducing self and others; 7. Knowing new words and readiness in building vocabulary, 8. English language proficiency using of correct tense in oral and written communication; 9. Ability to participate in negotiation and playing fair part in decision making; 10. Etiquetteson phone calls and email communications; 11. Positive attitude towards seeing things; 12. Being the part of team and leadership skills; 13. Problem solving, crisis management, team building skills; 14. Time management skills and critical thinking skills; 15. Capacity to manage stress and anger; 16. Ability of being part of social and professional networks, willingness to give and take support; 17. Establishing and maintaining relations; 18. Interacting with teams / groups and convincing people and sharing ideas; 19. Assertive presence on social media use of words in messages and posts; 20. Self-presentation and overall impact of presence in your eco system. Statistical analyzes were performed with SPSS 24 package program. There are 70 male and 143 female participants in the study. Maximum beneficiaries trained were the tribal females. The same scale form was applied to the participants before and after the training, and whether the training affected the scores given to the scale was tested with the Paired Sample t test.

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