Vocational education will be made mandatory for students of class 6 and above in government and aided schools soon, according to Sanjay Kumar, Union Secretary, Department of Education & Literacy. 

The initiative is in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020, which emphasises the integration of vocational subjects such as crafts, entrepreneurial skills, traditional and local arts, or any other subject that showcases local expertise in the curriculum.

Just about 5 per cent people have vocational education. 

Also read:Impactful change begins with the vision to challenge the status quo: Nirmala Lakshman

“One of the challenges is to generate demand for vocational training, but over a period, the market will create its own demand. Market will show the way on demand creation for vocational education,” Kumar said while speaking at the fifth edition of the businessline ChangeMaker Awards. 

He was addressing a special session conducted by Richa Mishra Tripathi, Senior Associate Editor, businessline, during the awards ceremony. 

“We may bring in a system of credits to ensure popularity (or there could be full-fledged subjects),” Kumar added, pointing out that the idea would be to “equip students with a variety of skills in addition to general education”. 

The goal is to equip students with a variety of skills in addition to general education, to prepare them to meet industry demands. 

Currently, India has 14.86 lakh schools, of which 10.5 lakh are government-owned or government-aided, the remaining are privately owned. Student enrolment is close to 26 crore. 

Also read:Educate Girls gets Changemaker Award for educating school dropout girls

Kumar acknowledged that there were learning losses during Covid and efforts were being made to ensure “bridging the learning gap continues”. 

The National Education Policy 2020 does factor in and tries to address some of these “learning gap issues”. For instance, the use of mother tongue for learning purposes is being pushed till Class 8. “It is seen that the best learning happens in the mother tongue. Now imagine the challenge in a country like India, where the language changes practically every 10 km. And through the NEP 2020, we are addressing all of that. The NEP believes in multi-lingualism, which adds to cognitive power,” Kumar said. 

He stressed on the need to create local role models. 

Pointing out that NEP 2020 aims to maintain a balance in terms of  regulation,  Kumar said states are now coming on-board with these new policies, bringing in their own policies too. 

“Under NEP, we believe regulation should be both light and tight. Also, I think, states are now coming on-board and acknowledging the changes,” he said. 

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW