Technical and vocational education and training in India: Lacking vision, strategy and coherence (2nd ed.)

This chapter briefly examines the performance of each of the five pillars of India’s TVET ecosystem. It also discusses the poor design and implementation of a national vocational qualification framework. It goes on to discuss the latest development in the field of education: the National Education Policy 2020 and its view on TVET, and finds it seriously wanting. The chapter argues that if India does not want its tertiary education system to be overwhelmed by the massification of school education that has occurred since the early noughties, it must divert increasing numbers of secondary graduates to vocational education and training. Together with a rising number of jobs in the non-agricultural sector, to which India’s youth aspire, strengthening vocational education offers the prospect of India potentially realizing its demographic dividend, in the same way as many East Asian countries. If India’s TVET system continues to lack vision, strategy, and coherence to underpin the country’s aspiration to become a high human development country, we risk frittering away our dividend.