Vocational Education in Mainstream Education

We do not see waves in politics and weather alone. We can witness them even in education. In the past, we saw waves of engineering colleges, pharma colleges, management institutions, deemed to be universities, and private universities (continuing). A new wave is preparing to hit the education market: Skills Universities.

Our Prime Minister, Hon’ble Shri Narendra Modi, wanted to promote vocational education. While doing so, he gave a slogan of ‘Skill India.’ He used this term to refer to vocational skills. However, many interpreted it as high-level skills like AI. They started offering programmes like B. Tech., M. Tech, and MBA through various skills universities, arguing that their programmes differ from those offered by traditional universities. There is no objection to these programmes, but one would wonder why we need another category of universities for these programmes. It shows our penchant for increasing the categories of higher educational institutions to confuse students.

These initial few lines clarify that we should not misunderstand these newly started skills universities as institutions promoting vocational education as envisaged by the Prime Minister.???

The GoI set up the Skill Development Corporation of India in 2008, and the present government gave the required boost to its activities when the Hon'ble Prime Minister advocated promoting vocational education in the country. The sole purpose of the Skills Ministry and SDCI was to foster vocational education. The objective was not to usher into another stream of UG and PG degree programmes under specialised skills universities.

Our Prime Minister deserves huge admiration for giving vocational education its due importance. Vocational education so far has been offered through Industrial Training Institutions (ITI). Now, they are supported by hundreds of skills centres throughout the country. However, we need to do much more to streamline vocational education and encourage students to go for it.

The main reason for the inadequate development of vocational education in India was our wrong perception. It was projected as the education stream for economically poor children. And that was a blunder. Unfortunately, we continue to make the same mistake. Vocational education should not be for economically poor children but for academically poor children.

Children have different aptitudes. Some learn by reading books, listening to their teachers, and gaining knowledge through many other sources. On the other hand, some children are good at learning by doing because they cannot focus on reading a book or listening to a lecture. They cannot grasp something through this method of imparting knowledge.

We must recognise that neither of the two categories of children is superior or inferior.??

The teachers should recognise the capabilities of the children at an early age and counsel their parents accordingly. The parents should also know their children’s abilities and guide them to choose the right path. But unfortunately, all the parents want their children to become Einstein and APJ Abdul Kalam. If the children have that talent, there is nothing wrong with having that ambition. However, if the children are forced to do what they cannot or do not enjoy, we destroy their future. The parents must know that there is another route that can make their children Dhirubhai Ambani and Bill Gates.

Children good at learning by doing should be encouraged to pursue vocational education, irrespective of their financial background. Also, we must remove those wrong notions from our minds that restrict our perception of vocational education to specific vocations. There are hundreds of vocations for students to get training.

We need a systematic approach to popularise vocational education and give due respect to it. That is possible if we work in the right direction to implement the NEP 2020 recommendation of bringing vocational education into mainstream education. We cannot bring it into mainstream education by calling it a financially poor children’s education, running independent skill training centres, and continuing with ITIs.

Vocational education should become a part of the new school education pattern of 5+3+3+4 recommended by NEP. National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for school education is in the finalisation stage and has proposed including vocational education in the school curriculum. However, the proposal does not seem simple because of the multiple options given to students. We should wait for the final proposal before commenting on it.

A better and simpler approach to bringing vocational education into the mainstream would be to give the ‘Vocational Stream’ as an option to students in addition to arts, science, and commerce in the 11th and 12th standard or prior (NCF has proposed something different). All the universities should offer a Bachelor of Vocation (B. Voc.) degree. (Currently, a few of them offer this UG programme). The students opting for the vocational stream in the 11th/12th standard would become eligible for the B. Voc. Programme. A time-bound plan should be made to shut down all the ITIs and Skills Centres, and the regular schools should impart all the vocational skills. Until ITIs are shut down, they should be treated as equivalent to 11th and 12th standard, and the students completing ITI should be eligible for the B. Voc. Programme.

As we advance, we should have master’s and doctoral programmes in vocational studies. The critical point is that at all levels of vocational programmes, teaching/learning methodology must focus on ‘learning by doing.’ The students should be counselled that they can become entrepreneurs through the vocational programmes. That will change everybody’s perception of vocational education.?

If we want to bring vocational education into mainstream education, some simple and quick actions are needed instead of complicated proposals.? ?

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