Bringing Vocational Education In Big Way !

Updated on: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal plans to make vocational education "an important part of secondary education," a Parliamentary panel was told last night.

Speaking to the House Consultative Committee on HRD, Sibal said the Ministry was working on a flexible training curriculum so as to impart skills for vocations peculiar to various regions.

This, he said, would make vocational aspect of secondary education relevant and useful to students from economically weaker sections, besides helping sustain and develop handicraft industries.

A Ministry statement this evening said the Committee meeting attended by Members as well as Minister of State for HRD D Purandeswari discussed Universalisation of Secondary Education.

It said Members emphasised the need for vocational education at secondary level in schools, starting from Class IX. Sibal acknowledged the need to ensure that schools and colleges are more evenly distributed across the land, instead of being concentrated in some places and missing in large areas.

He stressed geospatial mapping of data on availability of educational institutions-- primary, secondary and higher levels-- and child population across India to determine requirements. Such mapping will also help students exercise a choice of institutions for study, he said.

The Members were given a presentation of the government campaign to universalise secondary education-- Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan-- and the Model School Scheme by the Department of School Education and Literacy.

The RMSA is intended to raise enrolment ratio for classes IX-X to 75 per cent within five years, from 52.26 per cent in 2005-06, by facilitating enrolment of 3.22 million students by 2011-12.

This will take strengthening 44,000 existing government secondary schools, opening 11,000 new ones, appointing 1,79,000 additional teachers and building 80,000 new classrooms, Members were told.

Model Schools on the lines of Kendriya Vidyalayas in terms of pupil-teacher ratio, Information and Communication Technology usage, and so on are expected to set the pace for neighbourhood schools.

The Members asked about inadequacy of education related spending in the 11th Five Year Plan, setting up institutions in mountainous or other regions or having States give a vision for education as a basis for Central planning.

Also stressed were multilingual teaching and ''better coordination'' between the National Council of Education Research and Training and its State counterparts. Sibal clarified that such interaction was already on the cards.

The participants included Committee Members G N Ratanpuri, Dr Kapila Vatsyayan, Shobhana Bhartia, Baijayanti Jai Panda, Dr Chinta Mohan, Ghanshyam Anuragi, Jitendra Singh, Jose K Mani, Kabindra Purkayastha, Dr M Thambi Durai, Dr Nirmal Khatri, Prem Das Rai, Dr Ranjan Prasad Yadav and Sucharu Ranjan Haldar and HRD Secretaries Anshu Vaish and Vibha Puri Das

Bringing Vocational Education In Big Way !

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