XXII

New India Needs a New Model for Skill Development

Pawan Agarwal

India’s large young population presents it a unique opportunity to become ‘the human capital of the world’. The challenge, however, is to utilize the high proportion of young Indians, particularly the educated that are unemployed or underemployed. This is regardless of industry and businesses reportedly facing shortages of trained workers.

To address this paradox, the country’s education and training system must develop and align with both domestic and overseas demand for qualified people. Vocational education and training (VET) and skill development (SD) should be central to India’s development strategy. Developing a robust skill development ecosystem would better integrate education with the labour markets and act as an insurance against poverty.

This essay reviews the current scenario, making a case for a new approach and strategy to build a robust ecosystem for skill development for ‘New India’. It then lays down the key elements of a new model and institutional arrangements required for skilling in India. It also takes a holistic view of the country’s formal education and training system in order to build a synergy between the two.

Current Status

The formal VET system in India is small and underdeveloped. Merely 5.4 per cent of the country’s existing workforce has formal vocational training compared to 68 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Germany, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea.¹ This does not include skill acquisition through informal channels, which is quite significant. In the formal sector, there is some vocational stream in schools, vocational training in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) for workmen, in polytechnics for skilling a supervisory workforce, and professional education as a part of the country’s higher education system.

Skill Acquisition through Informal Channels

In India, skills are often ‘inherited’ and passed on from generation to generation, enabling individuals to carry on ancestral trade or occupations such as carpentry, plumbing, etc. Alternatively, some marketable expertise or skills are also acquired through apprenticeship to an ustad or skilled craftsman, enabling the individual to enter the large informal sector. Usually, skill acquisition takes place through informal channels with little or no emphasis on general or academic skills. Such people are mostly self-employed or are in low-paying jobs with little prospect of economic advancement. The formal sector, which is often better paying, requires skilled people with not only vocational but also at least basic academic skills.

VET at School Level

Vocational education at school level is small in India. There have been attempts to introduce the vocational stream over the past few decades, but these have failed to make much of an impact. Currently, only 6120 against 250,000 senior/senior secondary schools in the country offer vocational courses.² These together enrol less than 1 per cent of the students at the 10+2 level compared to over 50 per cent in China and 55 per cent in Japan. In addition, about 13,350 ITIs offer vocational courses after Class X (a few courses are after Class VIII and Class XII) in various trades. Total intake in such courses is about 1.4 million, which is less than one-tenth of the students passing out of Class X.³ Courses offered by the ITIs are not entirely aligned with the job opportunities available. A large majority of enrolment in ITIs is in the manufacturing trades that account for nearly two-thirds of all courses, while there are more job opportunities in the services sector. Further, the quality of vocational education and training provided both in the schools and ITIs is of poor quality, which is a major issue.

Vocational/Professional Education in Higher Education

After Class XII, students join universities and colleges for bachelors’ degrees. There are 800 universities and 39,000 colleges enrolling about 34.6 million students in the country. Two-thirds of these students pursue general or academic education. The remaining ones are professional courses, largely confined to engineering and education. In addition, about 12,000 stand-alone institutions outside the university system offer two-year diploma courses.⁴ These include polytechnics for engineering, nursing institutes and institutes for teacher education. Overall, higher education is skewed in favour of general or academic courses and vocational/professional studies are confined to some fields, such as engineering, IT and medical education, with fewer options in other fields. The quality of professional courses and mobility between degree and diploma courses are concerns. Certificate and diploma courses in polytechnics are often dead-end courses with no scope for further upward mobility and hence these are considered inferior qualifications.

Other Modes of Vocational Education and Skill Development

Apprenticeship training and short-term skilling are other major modes of vocational training and skill development in India. Apprenticeship, the preferred VET model globally, is grossly underdeveloped. Currently there are just about 300,000 apprentices in the country⁵ compared with more than 20 million in China. Recent reforms that provide for increased flexibility, enhanced compliance and higher stipends for apprentices are likely to increase the numbers. But far more coordinated efforts are needed to scale up apprenticeship significantly.

Recognizing the growing importance of skill development, Central and state governments have begun a plethora of skill development initiatives. Skilling courses range from a few weeks to a few months across many trades. The entire funding for such skilling comes from the government. Many private companies have emerged to deliver these training courses.

With a view to boost private initiatives in the training sector, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was set up in 2009. NSDC provides soft loans (and in some cases grants) for the purpose. It has also incubated setting up of industry-led Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) for creating national occupational standards (NOSs) and qualifications by job roles in various sectors. So far, forty SSCs have been established. A National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) to facilitate mobility across skill levels is also in place.⁶ There have been efforts to consolidate the highly fragmented short-skilling space after the formation of a separate Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in 2014.

Recent developments address some of the institutional issues but are mainly confined to short-term skilling. These have not had much impact on either the legacy VET system or on the formal education and training. VET reforms require a comprehensive approach and strategy that view it in conjunction with the formal education sector.

New Approach and Strategy

VET in the country is highly fragmented and underdeveloped and faces multiple challenges. In India, less than 10 per cent in the higher secondary classes (fifteen–sixteen years’ age group) pursue vocational education. At the undergraduate level in higher education, about 30 per cent of students pursue a vocational/professional stream. The remaining students pursue academic education. This is very low compared with advanced and industrialized countries, where often three-fourths of all young people pursue vocational/professional or skill-oriented education and training in all age groups. Apart from the size of the VET sector, multiplicity in names of institutions is confusing and distorts public choice. There is also a mindset issue where VET is taken as an ‘inferior’ qualification. Thus, this sector requires a new strategy and approach. Five areas (summarized below) require attention:

1. 1) Capacity and public spending—Consistent with India’s demographic, economic profile and high growth performance, the VET sector has to grow rapidly. While the private sector dynamism could be leveraged, much of the investment must come from the government as VET often caters to the poorest and the most disadvantaged people. India spends less than one-tenth of its overall education spending on VET. But in many countries VET takes the lion’s share, often exceeding 60 per cent of the overall public spending. There is also the opportunity to use idle capacity or overcapacity of the formal sector, for instance, engineering colleges for VET courses.
2. 2) Curricula, pedagogy, assessment and certification—For the VET sector, curricula, pedagogy and assessment require an approach different from the academic stream. It is more practice-oriented and aligned with job roles, making a strong industry-connect a ‘must’ for this sector. The teaching-learning methodology should involve less lecturing, note-taking, and more hands-on activities to allow for experiential and interactive learning. Industry-led SSCs that provide the basic building block for curricula, pedagogy and assessment now address this issue to some extent, but more and better alignment is needed, particularly in the context of the old legacy system and formal education.

   Apprenticeship fosters practical intelligence and enables better orientation for employability, compared to a single-track education system that leads to more youth dropping off the mainstream. Assessment and certification should not only establish equivalence between general and vocational education, but also provide for recognition of prior learning (RPL). This is particularly important for India since many people acquire skills informally. Finally, a unified qualification and credit framework is required to establish seamless link, between the VET sector and general education.

3. 3) Professional development and cadre of VET teachers—There is a large gap in the demand and supply of trained vocational teachers. Currently, there is limited capacity for their training and professional development. In the absence of a separate cadre and limited career progression, the VET sector has failed to attract talented faculty. Systems and practices of hiring experienced practitioners and industry professionals should be streamlined in this respect and require a huge effort.
4. 4) Institutional framework—Various types of VET institutions have little coordination among themselves. These have developed independent of each other. For instance, general education in schools and vocational training in ITIs are separated. So are vocational/professional training in polytechnics and stand-alone institutions vis-a-vis professional/technical education in universities and colleges. These are organized in silos with each having their own institutional arrangements for setting curricula, assessment and examination, teacher education, funding, regulation and governance. Thus, the institutional arrangements need to be rapidly overhauled.⁷
5. 5) Demand and cultural shift—There is a preference and attraction for white-collar jobs and an aversion to working with one’s in India. Thus, not surprisingly, general or academic education is preferred over the vocational option, resulting in lack of demand for VET education. Issues of societal perception and attitudinal bias are complex and do not have easy solutions. However, the fact that VET graduates find jobs or become self-employed more easily as compared with others is changing public attitudes towards this sector and contributing towards its credibility. Further demand for professional/skill certification can be generated by making provision for the same in the recruitment rules for public sector employment and conditions of contract for public works. Regulatory bodies can also make skill training and certification mandatory to not only create demand for qualified people but also to raise productivity and economic performance. The private sector can play a supporting role in this regard.

A New Model

The desired model framework for skill development through vocational education should provide opportunities for truly academically minded students to pursue education in mainstream academics while allowing others to be educated in applied streams, vocational and professional areas as per their choice. VET should be fully integrated with education at all four levels, cover apprenticeship and continuing education and training (CET) through short-term skilling courses. The larger move should be towards a unified National Qualification and Credit Framework (NQCF) to cover both general and vocational/professional education.

Level One—Integration in Primary School

The importance of working with one’s hands and the dignity of labour and manual work should be emphasized from Class VII onwards. This, following Mahatma Gandhi, is morally, educationally and socially appropriate. Such an emphasis will reduce the traditional Indian middle-class aversion to manual work and blue-collar employment. Soft skills and hands-on training should be part of the curricula for all elementary classes.

Level Two—Academic and Applied Streams in Secondary School

A scientifically designed aptitude test should measure cognitive skills for entry to Class IX and students could be split into academic and applied streams. Those with higher analytical abilities and capacity to think in abstract terms could go for the academic stream, while others should be admitted to the applied stream.

In classes IX and X, all subjects as per current practice should be taught but with different levels of sophistication. For instance, instruction in mathematics could be more abstract in academic stream, while in the applied stream, students can be exposed to illustrations of mathematical principles and the subject could be directly related to the use of mathematics in day-to-day life. There should be easy mobility from the applied to the academic stream. This would remove the stigma usually attached to the applied stream. There could be three categories of schools for classes IX and X: schools offering only the academic stream, those offering only the applied stream and hybrid schools offering both. Over time, enrolments in the applied stream should be at least half of overall enrolments.

Level Three—Professional Higher Secondary Schools

Another aptitude test after Class X should select students on their abilities beyond specific subjects or even linguistic and logical mathematical skills that standard IQ tests entail. These abilities should include musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily kinaesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and natural intelligence as key expressions of human ability that are relevant in a wide variety of professions. This test could be open to students from both academic and applied streams.

Most of the professional schools would be the normal schools of today. With some incremental investment, they can become professional schools. Such schools should provide students with skill sets for jobs or self-employment instead of an aimless pursuit of academic education. Professional schools could offer courses in agriculture and allied sector manufacturing and construction sectors and a wide variety of service-sector jobs.

ITIs could be re-branded as professional schools. As professional schools, ITI-curricula would include vocational skills as well as elements of general education, particularly languages, applied mathematics and soft skills. Some courses offered after classes VIII and XII should be discontinued so that entry to ITIs is uniform after Class X with a two-year duration of the course.

Level Four—Higher Professional Education

After higher secondary, students would transfer to two-year associate degree or three- or four-year bachelors’ degree programmes, offered in professional colleges or general colleges. The duration of these programmes may vary by profession and job roles and entry could be based on national level college-entry tests. Two-year associate degree programmes could be offered in the 12,000 existing stand-alone institutions. Further, about 19,000 to 20,000 colleges (half of the total 39,000 degree colleges) offer three- or four-year programmes in various professional areas and 400 (half of the total 800 universities) offer exclusively professional programmes. All these professional universities are similar to the universities of applied sciences in other countries and higher professional education could come under their purview.

Professional universities or skill universities could be at the apex of professional education offering masters and doctorate programmes in various disciplines. Likewise, general universities that are either unitary or multi-disciplinary could be at the apex of general higher education.

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship should be tightly integrated with professional education at level three and four. There could be two possible variants of this. In the first variant, students would work for four days in a week, followed by an academic course for one day, while in the other, students could study full-time for a year and a half and then follow up with six months of apprenticeship in a company/organization in a related field. The German model of dual education adopts the first variant and is the preferred model and should be encouraged. Larger focus on practice-oriented education, followed by a brief academic curriculum in short cycles has been found to support skills formation better.

Short-Term Skill Training

Short-term skilling courses would continue to be relevant and important. Such courses would be required for the young people dropping out of schools or leaving the system without any specific skillsets, and for Continuing Education and Training (CET) of those already in the workforce.

It would be preferable to study in small interrelated modules so that there is modular and credit accumulation that provides pathways into formal education and training systems. Short-term skilling opportunities should be locally available. Initiatives need to be taken so that skilling centres of good quality are available in all towns with a population of 10,000 or more throughout the country. Such courses should be fully or substantially funded by the government since they target the most disadvantaged sections of society.

National Qualification and Credit Framework (NQCF)

Finally, for easy mobility across the academic and applied (or vocational/professional) streams, there should be a National Qualification and Credit Framework (NQCF). It should cover both streams and ensure pathways either directly or with bridge courses for students throughout their educational career. Such a framework would provide guidelines for learning outcomes, pathways, assessment and accreditation of qualifications, allowing students to move easily between levels of study and institutions, receiving full credit for previous study. Both streams should be self-sufficient but mutually diaphanous and acknowledged as ‘equivalent however different’.

Communication skills, grooming and personality development should be a necessary part of all education, right from primary to higher professional education. Entrepreneurship education and training should be expanded through schools, colleges and training institutions and in industry clusters to foster job creation.

New Institutional Arrangements

With major changes in the nature of work and rapid technological advances, boundaries between vocational and general education, professional and higher education, conventional and distance or online education have blurred. A new VET model and institutional arrangements should reflect this reality. A large number of bodies, often with overlapping mandates, have emerged both at the national and state levels. There is a need to merge several of them and redefine the mandates of others to achieve effective functional convergence of efforts and have an integrated approach to education and training in the country. New and legacy structures have to be integrated to achieve coherence and effectiveness.

In the VET sector, industry-driven SSCs could play a pivotal role. These should be strengthened to provide inputs on available jobs in each sector. SSCs could develop broad curriculum frameworks and assessment protocols for various job roles. Short-term skilling and professional education in schools and colleges should follow these guidelines and protocols. SSCs could play key roles in mentorship for entrepreneurship.

While a single school up to Class X for both academic and applied streams can continue, for higher secondary, there could be either a single school board with two separate wings or two separate boards for professional and general education. Once ITIs are reclassified as professional schools, state councils for vocational training would not be needed. These could be responsible for short-term skilling courses and renamed as state boards for skill development. A relook at the structure and functions of the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA), the National Council for Vocational Training (NCVT) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) is required. Further, both formal education and VET should be brought under a single ministry.

Higher professional education in colleges could be regulated by professional universities, which could continue to be under the oversight of a national regulator. The mandate of ‘All India Council of Technical Education’ (AICTE) that covers engineering education, management education, hotel management, pharmacy, architecture and applied arts can be broadened to include all professional education areas after Class XII. AICTE can be renamed ‘All India Council for Professional Education’ (AICPE) and the body can provide national protocols and standards for coordination across professional universities and colleges. AICPE should work closely with the SSCs.

Regional Directorates of Apprenticeship Training (RDATs) that handle trade apprentices and Boards of Apprenticeship Training (BOATs) responsible for graduate, technician and technician (vocational) apprentices could be merged to achieve better outreach and outcomes and a seamless interface with industry. SSCs could also be involved to increase the outreach.

Summary and Conclusions

A new India requires a new model for skill development with a holistic view of formal education and the VET sector. The latter in India is highly fragmented and underdeveloped. It faces multiple challenges and requires a new strategy and approach. The sector itself has to be scaled rapidly, for which much larger public funding is needed. Improved and fit-for-purpose curricula, better pedagogy and appropriate assessment methods along with robust industry-interface are essential. A large pool of high-quality VET teachers and instructors and ability to attract talent for the same is necessary.