Boost vocational education

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Boost vocational education

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 | Ninad Karpe

Boost vocational education

last year’s Budget witnessed a two per cent cut in the allocation to the education sector. To give a thrust to the three critical programmes of the Government — Make in India, Skill India and Start-up India — it is critical to provide a boost to the education and skill development initiatives. The social sector has been unequivocally advocating for increasing education funds from the current 4 per cent to 10 per cent of GDP. In addition, the budget should look at the following five factors—

Teacher training: India has at least 1.4 million schools catering to over 270 million children. However, recent times have witnessed a dearth of qualified and skilled teachers. Special emphasis should be laid on introducing an internship programme for aspiring teachers in Government schools.

Education loan: Bank to provide education loans to students of lower income groups pursuing higher or vocation education, particularly in rural areas. Banks, however, should ensure that the student loan financing should move from collateral based to lien on future earnings.

Skill development: Official data shows, less than one adult out of 10 has any form of vocational training. less than five per cent of our potential workforce gets formal skill training to be employable. With a view to improve this, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship should be empowered with the suitable Budget allocation. A central mechanism should be laid to certify skilled workers, and the efforts on Skill Development Management System to be expedited.

Vocational training: Vocational education and training has gone a long way in up-skilling and integrating young people into the global market. In this context, the Government must make a clear commitment to raising the status of vocational education and training with the objective of developing industry-responsive and globally-employable manpower.

Proper infrastructure and IT facilities: Over 1,300 schools were poorly rated with regards to having the desired infrastructure. Besides, more than 1,600 schools had these facilities in an inadequate manner. Adequate attention should be paid at improving the infrastructure with a keen focus on upgrading the IT infrastructure to make the Digital India initiative a reality.

(The writer is Ninad Karpe, MD & CEO, Aptech limited)

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