Entry of foreign educational institutions will help impart skills and quality education to youths in India, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said on Tuesday.

Such institutions will not only set up campuses in India but would also be involved in many other arrangements like skill development and training, Sibal said at a conference organised by the Planning Commission.

He said foreign education providers can be involved in offering joint degrees, setting up campuses or offering training on skill development.

The Union Cabinet has recently approved the Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010, which seeks to regulate the foreign education providers in India.

The government has already allowed Foreign Direct Investment in education since 2000. But the new law will regulate their entry and operation, he said.

"By 2020, hopefully we may have 40 million students in colleges. There may be another 140 to 150 million outside the university. They will have to be empowered by skill training.

Foreign universities will also enter into that segment," he said, adding  that the work-force should be trained to world class standards so that Indian manpower can be of use globally and also for the country. "The focus has to be on vocational education and training," he said.

In most developed countries, nearly 95 per cent of youths learn a skill or a competence in a formal manner. This fosters employment generation, improves productivity and higher efficiency of processes within the country as well as improvement in the quality of life, he said.

Over 70 per cent of the Indian labour force is educated at below the primary level and only five per cent of youth are single skill vocationally trained compared to 96 per cent in Korea or even 22 per cent in Botswana, Sibal said.

The existing vocational training infrastructure caters to just 2.5 million people annually, Sibal noted.

Establishment of a Task Force on Skill Development, partnerships for the up-gradation of Industrial Training Institutes with the corporate sector and setting up 300 polytechnics under PPP mode and 400 polytechnics by the private sector alone are a few measures in skill development, he said.

The minister harped on public-private-partnership as a win-win model for expansion of education sector.

"It is indeed, an enormous task to educate and train all the youth in the relevant age group in a country with a young population of half-a-billion. Neither government nor the private sector can perform this task on their own.

"There is thus no other alternative but to forge partnerships between the public and private sector, between national and international institutions, engaged in the endeavour of education," Sibal said.

To implement the Right to Education up to Class VIII, an estimated Rs 1,40,000 crore would be required. The private sector participation in the field of elementary education is presently below five per cent, he said.

The requirement for universalising secondary education in the next five years has been estimated to be more than Rs one lakh crore.

He highlighted the concept of the PPP mode in education and said it can realised through building infrastructure and its maintenance, non-educational services and educational services.

Sibal said the government is considering refurbishing older schools belonging to state governments through the PPP mode. State Governments can avoid budget constraints for creating educational infrastructure through this method.

The Union Government is considering construction and maintenance of buildings of Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas through PPP, he said.