VOCATIONALISATION AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Work experience, skill based education, vocational and professional education have been considered as panecea, for current ill of irrelevant, dysfunctional and elistist oriented education. There is a popular demand to eradicate the feudal attitudes towards the manual work. A religious organisation emphatically observes: "Education should equip each and every human to master a profession, trade or skill so that he or she can contribute to the society and also be self reliant". Various issues screened by the non educational forums comprise of (i) content of courses, (ii) nature of sophistication in skill based education at different stages of education, (iii) operationalisation strategies to impart skill based vocational and technical education. Some of the pertinent recommendations are :
- It is necessary to incorporate work experience In the school curriculum at primary level, skill based education at middle level and vocational education at secondary level. However, a voluntary organisation from Karnataka feels that children should enter vocational stream at the stage earlier than 10+2 level, it can start after class 5.
- Vocational courses should not be limited only to engineering and technical subjects but include courses in agriculture, business, commerce, health and para medical services, rehabilitation sciences, home science and meet self employment and community needs.
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At post elementary level vocational training and education should be linked with TRYSEM and community polytechnics.
Technical and vocational education should be based on rural environment. The courses of training may include horticulture, agriculture, agroindustry, textiles etc.
There should be equal emphasis on practical and theoretical knowledge and the last year of training should be divided into two equal parts i.e. 6 months for theory and 6 months for practical.
Vocational courses should be introduced only after proper survey so that the men and women are assured of employment.
Vocational training should not block the way of a student for getting higher education. There should be a provision for lateral entry to higher, technical and professional courses.
A possible cooperation of local industries factories, mills should be sought in imparting practical training.
Education in colleges should have a vocational base and should be correlated with local industries.
The present technical education should be modernised and should reflect the needs of local industries.
A part of amount collected by way of taxes from local industries should be utilised for improvement of technical schools.
Separate University for technical education at State level is desirable.
Government should provide 100 per cent grant for setting up workshops for practical training in various states at primary, secondary, higher secondary schools and colleges.
Each district should have technical training institutes to provide technical education.
Technical training institute in rural areas should have hostel facilities.
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A professional body of engineers for Madhya Pradesh has expressed deep concern about the increasing incidence of unemployment amongst engineers and "devaluation engineering should be forum has demanded that the course in engineering college should linked with employment and no private engineering college should be allowed to open.