The move of the government to give ITI students a link to main-stream education sounds good on paper, but seems like a retrograde step. At a time when education is evolving away from main-stream undergraduate courses like BA, BSc and BCom, what purpose is served by providing links to traditional courses that have little value in a job market which lays more emphasis on skills. The matrix for upward mobility is such that a student who completes his ITI can take the SSC examination and move to the IX standard vocation, but the crucial question is will the syllabus in the IX build on what the student learnt in ITI or just be a repeat?
Similarly, will the undergraduate course take the student towards an engineering degree or diploma? Because that would be the natural progression for a student with a technical bent of mind. There is a great opportunity here to create a system that gives ITI students the opportunity to return to school or college to upgrade their skills to enable them to move up the ladder. Taking a technical student and turning him into a regular graduate is quite meaningless unless the only pursuit in mind is a degree for the sake of a degree. The BVoc course should be the natural progression for ITI students and the government must focus on creating more vocational degree courses for technical students.
