11.1.2 Vocational education and vocationalisation

Explained

1. Vocational education, vocationalisation and their cousins.

• Kothari's definition of work experience: participation in productive work in school, at home, in a workshop, on a farm, in a factory or any other productive situation. It is not a trade course; it is for every child.
• Vocationalisation keeps general education but makes it relevant to work; vocational education proper aims at employability in a named trade.
• Benefits listed in the B.Ed. text: specialised practical skills, a clear idea of job demands, skilled workers for the organised sector, and meeting industry's needs.
• CBSE offered about 40 vocational courses in Classes XI-XII, grouped as commerce, engineering, health and paramedical, home science, agriculture, hospitality and tourism, and others.
• New vocationalism (late 1980s onward): puts industry's skill needs at the centre of public education; TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) is seen as a driver of growth and an answer to youth unemployment. SDG 4 asks for equitable access to TVET.

2. Colonial roots (also in EDU-PO-01).

• Wood's Despatch (1854), called the Magna Carta of English education in India, wanted education to give "useful knowledge" and supported schools of medicine, engineering and law and practical instruction; colonial schooling still stayed literary, producing clerks.
• Hunter (1882) proposed the B-course for boys not going to university; in practice few schools ran it, because jobs and prestige went with the literary A-course.
• Hartog (1929) and Sapru (1934) blamed the purely literary high school for educated unemployment and wanted diversion to practical careers.
• Abbott-Wood (1937): vocational education should form a hierarchy parallel to general education: junior vocational schools entered after the middle (Class 8) stage and senior vocational schools after high school; part-time classes for workers; polytechnics for higher technical training. Its advice shaped technical high schools and polytechnics in the provinces.
• Gandhi's Basic Education (Wardha, 1937) made a productive craft the centre of all learning (EDU-TH-01); the detailed scheme came from the committee chaired by Dr Zakir Husain. A work-centred model for every child, not a separate track. The sale of pupils' craft products was to make the school partly self-supporting, so Basic Education (Nai Talim) is the classic case of earning while learning.
• Sargent (1944), officially Post-War Plan of Educational Development in India: after the common basic school, selected pupils go to a six-year high school of the academic or technical type.

3. Mudaliar Commission (1952-53): diversified courses.

• Four aims of secondary education: democratic citizenship, vocational efficiency, development of personality, and education for leadership.
• Multipurpose schools offering several diversified courses under one roof, so that each pupil follows aptitude.
• Seven groups: humanities, sciences, technical, commerce, agriculture, fine arts, home science.
• Core subjects for all, including a craft; technical schools and polytechnics to be expanded.
• Weakness found later: few schools had equipment and trained teachers; most pupils still chose the academic groups.

4. Kothari Commission (1964-66): work experience and vocationalisation.

• Report title: Education and National Development. It wanted education related to productivity.
• Work experience an integral part of education at every stage; social and national service alongside.
• Vocationalisation of secondary education with targets: about 20% of enrolment at the lower secondary stage and 50% at the higher secondary stage in vocational courses by 1986.
• The 10+2+3 structure: a common 10-year school, then +2 with an academic and a vocational stream.
• NPE 1968 accepted work experience and asked for more technical and vocational courses at the secondary stage.

5. The +2 vocational stream, 1976 to 2013.

• 1976: NCERT's framework "Higher Secondary Education and its Vocationalisation".
• 1977: Ishwarbhai Patel Committee (Review Committee on the Curriculum for the Ten-Year School) introduced SUPW.
• 1978: Adiseshiah Committee (National Review Committee on Higher Secondary Education with special reference to vocationalisation), report "Learning to Do: Towards a Learning and Working Society".
• 1985: Kulandaiswamy working group on vocationalisation.
• 1986 NPE / 1992 POA: vocational courses generally after Class 10, flexible enough for vertical mobility (moving up to higher studies); target 10% (1990) and 25% (1995) of higher secondary students.
• 1988: centrally sponsored scheme Vocationalisation of Secondary Education; 1993: PSSCIVE, Bhopal (Pandit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education, a constituent of NCERT) for curricula and teacher training. The scheme later moved under RMSA and, from 2018, Samagra Shiksha (vocational education in Classes 9-12).
• Why it fell short (BRAOU, Unit 21): secondary education stayed bookish and unrelated to productivity; the core-periphery and work experience schemes largely failed, so the +2 stage was not vocationalised as planned; some vocational streams closed because government could not supply materials, teachers and feeder colleges; the most urgent need is vocationally trained teachers.

6. Vocational training outside school (B.Ed. text, Unit 2).

• Polytechnics give diplomas; in AP, admission is through POLYCET, held by SBTET.

7. Skills framework era (2009 onward).

• NSQF is a competency-based framework: it places every qualification on levels by learning outcomes (knowledge, skill, responsibility), whether learnt in school, college, ITI or on the job; school vocational subjects in Classes 9-12 are NSQF-aligned.
• B.Voc degrees and community colleges (UGC, 2013-14) gave vocational learners a degree route; B.Voc is a skill-based undergraduate degree aligned to NSQF.
• NCrF (2023): 30 notional learning hours = 1 credit; a full year = 1,200 hours = 40 credits; credits go to the Academic Bank of Credits (2021), so vocational and academic credits count in one system.
• PMKVY (as of October 2026): PMKVY 4.0 runs inside the restructured Skill India Programme, approved in 2025 with PM-NAPS (apprenticeship) and Jan Shikshan Sansthan for the period to March 2026; check whether a newer phase has been notified.

8. NEP 2020 on vocational education (section 16).

• Diagnosis: fewer than 5% of India's workforce aged 19-24 had formal vocational education (12th Plan data), against about 52% in the USA, 75% in Germany and 96% in South Korea. Vocational education was seen as inferior, for those who could not cope with academics.
• Integration, not separation: no hard separation between arts and sciences, curricular and extra-curricular, or vocational and academic streams.
• Target: at least 50% of learners in school and higher education to have exposure to vocational education by 2025.
• Grades 6-8: a hands-on course sampling local crafts (carpentry, electric work, metal work, gardening, pottery); a 10-day bagless period of internship with local vocational experts; bagless days through Grades 6-12.
• Lok Vidya: important vocational knowledge developed in India, made available to students.
• NCIVE (National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education) to plan the integration; NSQF detailed further for each discipline and aligned with the International Standard Classification of Occupations of the ILO; HEIs to offer vocational courses, and B.Voc to continue.

9. Vocational training of persons with disabilities (B.Ed. Special Education text).

• Job analysis: studying a job to list the skills and conditions it needs; task analysis: breaking a job into small, sequential steps so each step can be taught. Generic skills are the prerequisites for any job; specific skills come from job analysis.
• Vocational training for students with disabilities should begin at about 16 years. The PWD Act, 1995 asked that special schools have vocational training facilities; NPE 1986 (task force) wanted a vocational training centre with each district special school.
• A sheltered vocational workshop has three purposes: work readiness for placement, independent living in the community, and production for self-sufficiency.
• Transition = the planned move from school to adult life and work. OSERS (Madeleine Will, 1984): a bridge from the security of school to adult life, with three classes of services (no special services, time-limited services, ongoing services); Wehman, Kregel and Barcus (1985): three stages, input and foundation → process → employment outcome; Pathways model: the range of job choices and the adult's own role in choosing. The Individual Transition Plan (ITP) is part of the student's IEP.
• Types of employment: competitive (open) employment with others, supported employment (regular job with a job coach), sheltered employment (a protected workshop set up for persons with disabilities), and self-employment.