Vocational Education & Training – Gaps & Challenges

Vocational Education & Training needs to be given high priority in India. Skill development is crucial to reap the demographic dividend in India, where the size of the working age population, as per the annual budget 2008-09, is estimated to increase from 77.5 crore in 2008 to 95 crore in 2026. Edutech has earlier started the grassroots reforms in this area, such as innovative delivery models, re-branding, improving certiﬁcation and monitoring as well as increasing ﬂexibility of Vocational Education & Training with the school and higher education streams.

India as a country has an advantage when it comes to absolute number of workforce but the industry is facing a crucial shortage of "skilled" and "qualified" manpower. 90% of the jobs in India are "skill based"; entailing the requirement of vocational training.

As per industry analysis, nearly 75 to 80 million jobs will be created in India over the next five years. It is estimated that almost 75 to 90% of all additional employment will require some vocational training.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT : The Challenge & Key Problems

The current capacity of institutions and initiatives which are imparting skill development in the country is 3.1 million per annum against country's target of skilling 500 million people by 2022.

Skill training in the unorganized sector, which forms 92% of our work force is not existent except for that granted by local ustaads or family elders.

There is lack of any assessment of skills and requirements at the entry stage itself.

Returns from VET are low and the quality of training does not meet the needs of industry.

The Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh in his Independence Day Speech, 2006, stressed upon the issue of Skill Gaps. He said:

"We will need to ensure far greater availability of educational opportunities at the higher education levels so that we have not just a literate youth but a skilled youth, with skills which can fetch them gainful employment. As our economy booms and as our industry grows, I hear a pressing complaint about an imminent shortage of skilled employees. As a country endowed with huge human resources, we cannot let this be a constraint"

Most of the Vocational Education Training Institutes are characterized by structurally rigid and outdated centralized syllabi that do not have much sync with the prevailing market conditions.Performance outcomes in VET institutions are not measured with industry participation and there is no incentive for better performance.Current education system is non-responsive to the skill demands of the existing and future industry, leading to a supply-demand gap on various counts.Outside the school system, relevant vocational training centers are ill-equipped to handle the demand and are accessible to only a selected number of students who have passed at least level 10 and 10+..

EDUTECH SKILLS SOLUTIONS

Associated with NIESBUD- The National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development