The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) will soon be signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Aniket S Talati, President, ICAI, on January 22, announced at a press conference here. Talking about the collaboration with CBSE, Talati added that ICAI will sign an MoU with CBSE on February 8. Through this partnership, ICAI will provide career counselling in CBSE schools to make school students aware about the Chartered Accountancy course and the future job opportunities available after completing this professional course. ICAI will also develop some course content for CBSE-affiliated schools in form of modules and videos. This announcement was made during ICAI's National Education Summit on Commerce & Accountancy (NES-CA), which is being held on January 22 and 23 in New Delhi. During the inaugural session of NES-CA 2024, ICAI also launched study material “Aarambh: A Step Towards Financial Independence”, which has been launched to enable students to foster financial resilience and enhance their decision making ability. This study material has modules such as 'Fundamentals of financial planning', ''banking and credit', 'understanding financial statements', 'basics of taxation', 'investment planning' and 'retirement planning'. ICAI will also sign MoUs with 11 universities during this two-day event. As a part of the collaboration, ICAI will extend support to universities and colleges in various aspects, including the development of Commerce syllabi, content development, online and recorded lectures, and faculty development programmes. Meanwhile, Prof Deepak Kumar Srivastava appreciated the institute for playing "a crucial role in promoting financial transparency, accountability, and good governance". He further stated that UGC is closely working with Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) and recently issued the guidelines to formulate the premise for integrating skilling into higher education at all levels and for introducing short-term industry-relevant courses (certificate courses) in the Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) to bridge the skill gap. "We need to prepare an ecosystem among accounting professionals who are equipped with multiple skills matching with the requirements of global job market," he added.
