Vocational
Education and Training
At
present, Vocational Education is provided only at
the +2
stage and, even here, it is restricted to a distinct
stream
that is parallel to the academic stream. In
contrast
to the NPE 1986 goal of covering 25 per cent
of the +2
enrolment in the vocational stream by the
year 2000,
less than 5 per cent of students choose this
option at
present. The programme has been debilitated
by a range
of conceptual, managerial and resource
constraints
for more than 25 years. Apart from being
viewed as
an inferior stream, it suffers from poor
infrastructure,
obsolete equipment, untrained or underqualified
teachers
(often on a part-time basis), outdated
and
inflexible courses, lac k of vertical or later al mobility,
absence of
linkage with the ‘world of work’, lack of a
credible
evaluation, accreditation and apprenticeship
system,
and, finally, low employability (Report of the
Working
Group for the Revision of the Centrally
Sponsored
Scheme of Vocationalisation of Secondary
Education,
NCERT, 1998)
. Clearly, the gigantic and
urgent
task of building an effective and dynamic
programme
of vocational education is long overdue.
Institutionalisation
of work-centred education as an
integral
part of the school curriculum from the preprimary
to the +2
stage is expected to lay the necessary
foundation
for reconceptualising and restructuring
vocational
education to meet the challenges of a
globalised
economy.
It is
proposed, therefore, that we move in a
phased
manner towards a new programme of
Vocational
Education and Training (VET), which is
conceived
and implemented in a mission mode,
involving
the establishment of separate VET centres
and
institutions from the level of village clusters and
blocks to
sub-divisional/ district towns and
metropolitan
areas. Wherever possible, it would be in
the
national interest to utilise the school infrastructure
(often
utilised for only a part of the day) for setting up
this new
institutional structure for VET. Such VET
centres/
institutions also need to be evolved in
collaboration
with the nationwide spectrum of facilities
already
existing in this sector. This will imply the
expansion
of the scope of institutions like ITIs,
polytechnics,
technical schools, Krishi Vigyan Kendras,
rural
development agencies, primary health centres (and
their
auxilliary services), engineering, agricultural and
medical
colleges, S & T laboratories, cooperatives and
specialised
industrial training in both the private and
public
sectors. These measures would natur ally call for
shifting
and adjusting the resources of the present
6,000 -
odd senior secondary schools with vocational
streams by
dovetailing them with the new VET
programme.
The vocational education teachers engaged
in these
schools at present should have the option of
either
being absorbed in to the work-centred education
programme
in the same school or being able join a
new VET
centre or institution in the region.
VET would
be designed for all those children
who wish
to acquire additional skills and/or seek
livelihoods
through vocational education after either
discontinuing
or completing their school education.
Unlike the
present vocational education stream, VET
should
provide a ‘preferred and dignified’ choice rather
than a
terminal or ‘last-resort’ option. As with the
school,
these VET institutions would also be designed
to be
inclusive, providing for skill development of not
just those
children who have historically suffered due
to their
economic, social or cultural backgrounds, but
also of
the physically and mentally disabled. A
well-designed
provision of career psychology and
counselling
as a critical development tool would enable
children
to systematically plan their movement towards
their
future vocations or livelihoods, and also guide
the
institutional leadership in curricular planning and
evaluation.
The proposed VET shall offer flexible and
modular
certificate or diploma courses of varying
durations
(including short durations) emerging from
the
contextual socio-economic scenario. Decentralised
planning
of these courses at the level of individual VET
centres/
institutions and/or clusters thereof would have
to keep in
mind the ongoing rapid changes in
technology
and patterns of production and services in
a given
area, along with the diminishing access to natural
resources
and livelihoods for the vast majority of the
people.
The courses would provide multiple entry and
exit
points with in-built credit accumulation facility. Each
course
will also have an adequate academic component
(or a
provision for a bridge course or both) in order
to ensure
lateral and vertical linkages with the academic
and
professional programmes. The strength of a VET
centre
would lie in its capacity to offer a variety of
options
depending upon the felt need of the aspirants.
The VET
curriculum should be reviewed and
updated
from time to time if the programme is not to
become
moribund and irrelevant to the vocations and
livelihoods
in a given area or region. The centre
in-charges
or institutional leadership would need to have
access to
adequate infrastructure and resources as well
as be
vested with the necessary authority and academic
freedom to
establish ‘work benches’ (or ‘work places’
or ‘work
spots’) in the neighbourhood or regional rural
crafts,
agricultural or forest-based production systems
and
industries and services, thereby utilising the available
human and
material resources optimally. This
collaborative
arrangement has three advantages. First,
the VET
programme can be set up with minimum
capital
investment. Second, the students would have
access to
the latest techniques and technology that
become
available in the area. Third, the students would
get
on-the-job experience and exposure to real-life
problems
of designing, production and marketing. For
this
purpose, it should be made obligatory for all kinds
of
facilities engaged in production and services such
as
agriculture, forestry, private and public sector
industries
(including cottage and small-scale
manufacturers)
to collaborate with the schools in the
area by
providing the required ‘work benches’ (or
‘work
places’ or ‘work spots’), in the addition to
offering
training and monitoring support.
The
success of the VET programme is also
critically
dependent upon building up a credible system
of
evaluation, equivalence, institutional accreditation
(extending
to ‘work benches’ and individual expertise)
and
apprenticeship. Care has to be taken to ensure that
such
standardisation does not become a negative tool
for
rejecting/ disqualifying the diverse knowledge and
skills
that characterise the different regions of India,
especially
the economically underdeveloped regions like
the
North-east, hilly tracts, the coastal belt and the central
Indian
tribal region. An appropriate structural space
and a
welcoming environment will have to be created
in the VET
centres and institutions for engaging
farmers,
animal husbandry, fishery and horticulture
specialists,
artisans, mechanics, technicians, artists, and
other
local service providers (inc luding IT) as resource
persons or
guest faculty.
The
eligibility for VET courses could be relaxed
to include
a Class V certificate until the year 2010, when
the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is
expected to achieve UEE,
but
subsequently it must be raised to Class VIII
certificate
and eventually to Class X certificate when
the target
year of universal secondary education is
reached.
In no case, however, would children below
the age of
16 years be eligible for admission to a VET
programme.
VET centres could also act as skill and
hobby
centres for all children from the primary stage
onwards,
and could be accessed before or after school
hours.
Such centres should also be available for schools
to
negotiate a collaborative arrangement for the
work-centred
curriculum even during school hours.
In order
to translate this vision of VET into
practice,
several new support structures and resource
institutions
will have to be created at various levels,
including
districts, states/ UTs and the centre, besides
strengthening
and reviving the existing national resource
institutions like NCERT’s
PSSCIVE at Bhopal.
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