New Delhi: The First Australia India Education and Skill Council (AIESC) meeting will be held on Monday at IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat, the Ministry of Education said in a statement.

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, according to the Ministry of Education's press release.

This is the first time that education and skilling are being brought under the same institutional forum. The visit is expected to foster collaboration, participation, and synergy in critical areas of mutual interest in education and the skill domain. The meeting will be jointly chaired by Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India; Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, Government of Australia; and Brendan O'Connor, Minister for Skills and Training, Government of Australia, the release added.

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 countries, it said.

The ministers will be visiting key institutions to identify critical themes for collaboration. This includes visits to the Centre for Creative Learning, IIT Gandhinagar, which works on nurturing scientific temper and the inherent creativity in students and teachers through the creation of tools, the dissemination of ideas focusing on STEM art, toys, the 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 the requisite intellectual capital and human resource skills. The Vidya Samiksha Kendra, which 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 Dharmendra Pradhan and 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: A 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 workforces, and strategies. It will also aim to facilitate research networks across chosen disciplines between the two countries, the release said.