SCHOOL-LEAVING CERTIFICATES FOR ITI STUDENTS SOON, SAYS MINISTER

On the second anniversary of the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy announced that the government is planning to set up a central board of certification for Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) that would grant school finishing certificates, equivalent to Class 10 and 12. This would be on the lines of Central Board of Secondary Education.

Mr Rudy, speaking to reporters, said, “The government has decided to set up a central certification board to give equivalent certificates to students of ITIs, which currently number around 2.3 million.” The move is expected to boost vocational education in the country and will also encourage people to take up skill oriented job. The minister claimed that there is a huge demand for a workforce which has industrial skills and the government has already put in place a grading system for more than 100 skills which includes jobs like gardeners, fitters, welders.

The minister further said that students who did not perform well in normal schools were put in ITI’s which should not be the case. He added, “Sadly, our policy has always been to put the students who didn’t perform well at school, or dropouts, into the ITIs and they are not given matriculation or higher secondary certificates. Manual work has not been an aspirational quality in India and education has been biased against skills.”

The mismatch in demand and supply of skills is such that there are 18 lakh engineering seats in India out of which about 8 lakhs are vacant. But now the government through, the Skill India programme, is trying to train students so that they can be absorbed in vocational skills by the industry or they can start their own ventures.