A new integrated system of technical education at the secondary school stage has been proposed by the Centre. This proposal, which seeks to vocationalise secondary education, is expected to come up before the meeting of the All-India Council for Technical Education here [New Delhi] tomorrow [May 24]. The scheme envisages two points of entry – one at the end of the seventh class and the other at the end of the tenth class. The integrated course will be of five years duration to run concurrently with secondary education but as a distinct and specialised course. This, however, is based on the assumption that the duration of the school education will be 12 years as recommended by the Education Commission. The idea is that students completing seventh class and tenth class may be siphoned off into technical education, oriented towards industrial employment. Already there is a scheme of junior technical schools which is not very popular in some regions and it will be replaced by the new scheme. According to official estimate, provision will have to be made for this type of vocational training for two million students and on the basis of an enrolment of 1,000 students per school, about 2,000 technical high schools will be required by 1986. Only then education at secondary level can be said to have been vocationalised, it is argued. Besides the existing junior technical schools, about 100 of the present multi-purpose schools are to be converted into the proposed technical high schools. These new schools will be located near major industrial complexes to ensure close link between training and employment. This scheme will require about 67,000 teachers and it is proposed to train a new cadre of teachers for this purpose at the regional colleges of education of the National Council of Educational Research and Training and other teacher training centres to be set up at selected engineering colleges and polytechnics.
