January 31, 2013, 12:00 am
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is now pushing its agenda of having vocational courses in Std XI-XII of all affiliated schools. While vocational courses have been an option earlier as well, very few schools would offer them to students. But from the coming academic year (2013-14), the central board wants schools to offer at least one vocational course to its students.
Biswajit Saha, CBSE’s programme officer (vocational), has written to affiliated schools, reminding them of the 40 vocational courses being offered by the board. Saha writes that "India has only 5% skilled workers in its total workforce. It is projected that the labour force will grow by close to 2% or some 7 million or more a year, over the next few years. The clear objective with this initiative is to teach real life applications at an early stage, so that the required talent can be developed for a better future".
