Stature and Growth of Vocational Education in India

Vocational Education or skill based education are same thing for which the demand has accelerated due to shortage of skilled labour in India. Vocational education aims to enhance skills of the students that help them to grow beyond basic education and learn some real life skills at the time of their learning period. At present, companies are starting to understand changing need of work in this competitive environment and aim at hiring specialists or skill based employees for better future.

Statistics as compared to other countries 
Countries like Switzerland, Germany, Singapore are currently at top in providing the best vocational and education.According to researched data, 65% of secondary students opting vocational programs in Switzerland as well as Singapore and 48% students of Germanywhich is still higher than OECD average.

If we talk about employment status 93.3% in Singapore, 90.4% inSwitzerland, 90.1% in Germany, 84.8% in USA of age group 15-29 are already employed but in India it’s only 30% which is way behind any of these countries. These statistics indicates that India lags behind as compared to other countries and there is need to promote vocational education more than any of other countries.

Government and various other sources are taking part in improving vocational education in India. Twelfth five year plan of India, aims to increase formal skills in at least 25% of population and estimated generation of 50-70 million job for skilled candidates by the end of the plan.

Projected data of year 2012 indicates, India’s difficulty to fill up job was 48% which is way above than the global standard of 34%. To improve, more than 13000 vocational training institutes have started in India now. World Bank approved funding of US$125mn for which aims to improve quality vocational education at various ITIs. Junaid Ahmad, World Bank county director in India said that “Expanding and improving formal long-term skills is essential for India to create a globally competitive workforce”.

Government Initiatives
India and Germany have signed an agreement of budget of US$3.37million to help and improve vocational training and skill development in India. Germany partnered in an initiative with India to create 500 million skilled workers by 2022.

Skill India campaign is launched on 15 july,2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi which aims to provide training to 400 million people in India by 2022. This mission includes initiatives like Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna, National Skill Development Mission, Skill Loan Scheme, National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreurship,2015.

As per the Union Budget 2017-18, Government of India has allocated around Rs 17000 cr. to help in advancement of employment generation, skill development and expansion of Skill India Mission. New start-ups and various other businesses are growing in this industry by providing low cost vocational training in different skills at wide scale through websites and applications.

Expert Speaks
D Venkat, CEO and HR consulting leader, Strides Consulting quoted “In a country like ours, vocational education is the only way forward, given the background that even the PM has made a clarion call for a Skills India initiative to train the youth of this nation to make them job-ready. Despite the increase in number of colleges across, the level of employability across the entire population has been abysmally low – even in the case of engineering colleges, some surveys have suggested that only 5% of the pass outs are employable. The reason for this is the lack of vocational emphasis, and a blind adherence to outdated syllabi. Instead, if the focus in our finishing schools will be on impacting vocational training, it will be a huge advantage for the industry, and in turn the country’s economy.

It is also pertinent to note that the investments that go into vocational training at all levels will be much lesser than raising fancy campuses, that impart almost negligible value addition to the student community. Thus, the investments in vocational education will also mean a significantly higher ROI for the community at large.”

Rhian Thomas, Director International Relations, The Chopras quoted "A negative social bias has long been associated with vocational education. Perceptions of its relevance to low academic performers, as well as poor quality provision and restricted future pathways have prevented young people worldwide from enrolling. In many developing countries, including India, young people and their parents shun vocational education, which more often than not is seen as a 'second-choice' education option. Its low status is often rooted in countries’ colonial past, associated with the training received by 'inferior' groups for blue-collar jobs.

Across the world however, governments and businesses are now waking up to the importance of work-relevant, vocational education. The recognition that such skills are vital for poverty reduction, economic recovery and sustainable development has led to increasing worldwide policy attention. None have moved as strongly and consistently as some of the European countries including Germany, Finland and Switzerland. These countries offer dual-track programming that sees higher enrollment in career and technical courses with correspondingly, some of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the world. Such countries also demonstrate less cultural stratification around employment options and pull enrollment from all levels of socio-economic backgrounds.

India, a young ambitious country that adds 12 million people to its workforce every year, has its own unique set of issues. In keeping with the worldwide trend however it has responded to these challenges and has clearly placed Skills at the top of its agenda with a wide-ranging support package of policies and programmes designed to skill its youth population. Nothing is more evident of its commitment to change than the creation of the Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) in 2014 which acted as a driver for the much needed policy activity in the Skills sector, as well as the 2015 ‘Skill India’ initiative which aims to train over 400 million people in different skills by 2022.

India has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. But in order to develop the skilled and dynamic workforce it needs to ensure its sustainability into the future, more needs to be done, drawing upon best practices from, and maximizing partnership opportunities with, those countries that have been successful in their attempts to increase enrollments in the vocational education sector."

Conclusion
These initiatives by government and other investors will definitely help India to grow and produce more skilled employees. Not only that, it will also help in economic development through reduction of poverty and unemployment. There are lot of opportunities for investors to invest in vocational education for betterment of country and their own growth.