Mainstreaming vocational education the challenge

The draft NEP envisions transforming India into an equitable and sustainable vibrant knowledge society. It reiterates the universally accepted strategy to do so: provide high quality education to one and all. The Kasturirangan Committee presents a detailed yet simple and inspiring articulation of India’s new education policy. It specifically mentions India-centered education and, for the first time, boldly acknowledges that: “Universal access to quality early childhood education is perhaps the best investment that India can make for our children’s and our nation’s future.”

The draft NEP is the outcome of serious analysis of the existing education scenario that puts the learner under a coercive and overburdening regime that impedes the power of ideas and imagination, restricting students to the prescribed textbooks and to rigid patterns of teaching and evaluation, relies heavily on rote memory, and in which the only measure of learning attainments is the board examination score.

In contrast, NEP-2019 envisions a dream world of education that promises: “Interactive and fun classrooms, where questions are encouraged, with creative, collaborative and exploratory activities for deeper and more experiential learning.” It would require a Herculean effort to achieve an attitudinal transformation amongst the institutions responsible for reorienting curriculum, redesigning textbooks, preparing content for online learning systems. They will be required to reinvent pedagogy, inspire and prepare every teacher to create an empathetic learning environment. By its very nature, the existing system of curriculum and annual board examination impedes the development of what the NEP-19 considers 21st century skills: critical thinking, creativity, scientific temper, communications, collaboration, multilingualism, problem-solving, ethics, social responsibility, digital literacy. The proposed structural change that integrates school education across the 3-18 years of learning requires a comprehensive understanding of the child’s natural cognitive, emotional and physical development.

A seamless curricular transition would be possible only when the curricula, activities and gradual acquisition of skills are all planned and developed through integrated and harmonized inputs not only from academics, pedagogues and authors but also from neuroscientists, psychologists, health and nutrition experts and others. Narrow specializations within the disciplines may not be the right blend for tomorrow.

The NEP-19 has aptly visualized the need to recommend flexibility in the choice of subjects and removal of hard separation of content in terms of curricular, extra-curricular or co-curricular areas. It also recommends removal of such separation between arts and science, or vocational and academic streams. This will pose a big challenge to curriculum developers and textbook writers, who are accustomed to contributing in rather specialized areas even in school textbooks. Intensive pre-writing workshops would be necessary before the process of developing new curricula – with substantially reduced load – could be undertaken.

Earlier attempts to emphasize working with hands and generate interest in acquiring vocational skills, particularly at the secondary stage, did not succeed and it remains a major drawback in Indian school education. At the policy level it was emphasized seriously by the Kothari Commission (1964-66) onwards, but did not find substantial acceptance amongst children, or parents. The current proposition -- no hard separation of vocational and academic streams -- is a refreshing and bold step. This non-separation is proposed both for elementary and secondary stages. Formation of the right attitudes at the elementary stage would greatly help in making choices at the secondary stage.

One must learn from the past experience that led to the failure to vocationalise education at +2 stages. The current proposition, along with the ‘cafeteria approach’, offering a wide range of learning options, would require infrastrucre, creation of organic links with industry, developing entrepreneurship skills and offering incentives and scope for self-employment. If the system succeeds in inspiring even 30-40% children to acquire vocational skills, it would require massive investments in developing institutions that would prepare and train teachers and material developers.

Over the years, practical work even in science subjects at +2 levels has been reduced to a farce in most schools. The system has to create not only new institutions but also revitalize the provisions for laboratories, workshops and places that offer opportunities of “working with hands”. In the early stages, considerable advocacy would be necessary to help students and parents comprehend the scope offered by vocational skills to make creative contributions as well as to lead a good life. It will be an arduous task to remove existing prejudices against vocational areas and the preference for certain combinations of subjects. Schools and curriculum developers have a responsibility to see that the notion that only ‘weak’ students take up the vocational stream is removed.

(The writer is a former director of NCERT and presently represents India on the Executive Board of UNESCO)