In a bid to encourage vocational education in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Maharashtra’s School Education department under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has collaborated with the School of Vocational Education (SVE) at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). In the first year of collaboration, SSA plans to connect 15,000 students from government schools to various Bachelor of Vocational (BVoc) courses offered at the SVE.
In times when most students think of traditional Arts, Commerce or Science degrees after Class XII, the idea is to divert them toward BVoc courses which are more employment-oriented. Awareness will be created at secondary school level as students will be eligible for these courses after passing Class XII. Plan is to increase the total number of students taking admission to these courses, each passing year. Under the collaboration, awareness will be created in government-run schools and students will get to take admission to various courses offered by the SVE at TISS.
State Project Director Kailas Pagare said, “Several students looking forward to working soon tend to join Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) or diploma courses after Class X. But these are no degrees. The BVoc courses on the other hand are degrees, having multiple entry-exits which not only guarantee employment, but also provide students with earn-and-learn opportunities as these courses run in collaboration with industry partners. With official degrees in skills of their choice, our students will have better chances in the job market in future.”
Pagare shared that SSA is working in tandem with the vision of NEP 2020 which aims at taking vocational education to 25 per cent of students until year 2025. “The collaboration with the SVE at TISS is to not only help create awareness but also provide a direct channel for our students to enroll in these courses. These courses can run anywhere as long as a batch of required number of students is formed in one location where an industry player too is ready to collaborate,” added Pagare.
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Professor Madhushree Sekher, Dean at SVE, said, “We have over 30 different types of BVoc courses in sectors as varied as agriculture, automotive, banking and finance, child or healthcare, logistics, retail, tourism & hospitality, among others. All these courses run with industry partners as the course module has 60 per cent of practical training components. In many cases, students also receive a stipend as they learn on the job which helps them for payments of fees for the course.”
Talking about the importance of such a collaboration, Professor Sekher said, “The BVoc degrees are available at different institutes but there is no aspirational value among students to pursue these courses, as they are not widely recognised or mentioned as required eligibility to apply for any kind of job. This will educate school-children about the benefits of pursuing a BVoc degree.”
The SSA also plans to bring aspirational value to BVoc degrees.