In a free market economy like India, albeit with some socialist characteristics, education is largely seen as an investment for economic growth, especially vocational education.
After much deliberation and an expansive consultation process, the National Education Policy (NEP) of India has finally seen the light of day, providing India with an education policy after 34 years. Hailed as a transformative document, NEP 2020 has garnered mixed reactions from the education community but largely been accepted as a positive step towards reforming an underperforming education system.
The highest grosser however, has been the vocational education space, which has faced the wrath of neglect from policymakers for decades now. This has led to it being a dysfunctional education stream even as studies suggest a “good rate of return” in the labour market for upper secondary vocational education and training (VET). India has one of the youngest populations in the world and an asset called the “demographic dividend,” which has been extensively studied by researchers and academics alike. In a free market economy like India, albeit with some socialist characteristics, education is largely seen as an investment for economic growth, especially vocational education.
The NEP 2020 has made vocational education problematic by stating that it is “perceived to be inferior to mainstream education.” It further states that the policy aims to “overcome the social status hierarchy associated with vocational education” by integrating it with mainstream education in a “phased manner.” This has been proposed to be accomplished by the creation of a National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF), which will be coordinated with the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) for ease of mobility between streams. This integration has been planned from upper primary segment onwards, by offering short-term internships with indigenous artists, crafts-people and blue-collar professionals. The policy also perceives it as a way of “emphasising the dignity of labour.”
Qualification frameworks are global policy tools, usually adopted by economies to reform vocational education systems. While the NSQF is an outcomes-based level descriptor, which specifies what skill, knowledge or aptitude one must possess at a particular level in the vocational education space, NHEQF will perform the same function in the higher education space. Although Section 18.8 of NEP 2020 aims to “empower institutions,” outcomes-based Qualification Frameworks (QFs) in vocational education are infamous for undermining educational institutions. This is because outcomes or competencies can be acquired irrespective of the input factors, such as particular educational institute, curriculum or pedagogy. This essentially means that any skill or vocation can be provided with a credit, whether it is acquired in a formal, informal or non-formal setting. Which is why NSQF has thus far failed to reform VET in India. However, this does not necessarily mean that another qualification framework, albeit in the higher education space, will fail too. NHEQF can thus be hailed as a constructive recommendation, if the process of design and implementation considers certain critical nuances.
Although QFs do not have a widely positive success rate in most countries, it has been successful only in cases where education institutions have led the way and all stakeholders have equally contributed to the building of the vocational education systems, such as in the case of the Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework (SCQF). In fact, the SCQF is an umbrella framework that has several sub frameworks that comprise general, vocational and higher education and training systems. Similarly, although the South African Qualification Framework encompassed all streams of education at the time of inception, it was recently modified to create sub frameworks in general education, higher education and vocational training — following wide criticism of the original framework that failed to reform its education system. This shows the way ahead for NHEQF and NSQF where educational institutes should play an active role in determining the design, curriculum and pedagogy, instead of other private stakeholders supplying the ready material for institutes to follow.
The proposed “National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education (NCIVE)” will have to undertake this exercise of carefully detailing the NSQF further, as suggested in the NEP 2020. While doing so, it is also necessary for this committee to simultaneously correspond with NHEQF for viable horizontal credit transfers and equivalence.
The creation of the NHEQF can be considered a step in the right direction, as long as it is followed by other structural changes in the labour market. The implementing body in various states will have to understand and operationalise these structural changes for the policies to be realised on the ground. VET is popularly embedded in the Human Capital Theory. This emphasises investment in human capital for economic growth, and often blames individuals and education institutions for the skill shortages in the economy. Hence, the social problems of unemployment and under-employment in a country are attributed to these shortages. This is also the prevailing discourse in the skills community — that companies cannot find enough skilled labour from Indian education institutions. However, there is an emerging area of political economy in skills that identifies “the low demand for skills and the lack of jobs requiring qualification” to be the primary culprit of these social problems.
The “dignity of labour” is directly associated with the availability of jobs that require the labour, acquired qualification as well as acknowledgment in material senses of the skills they possess. Unless the government creates jobs that acknowledges and incentivises these qualifications, these reforms suggested by NEP 2020 will be rendered ineffective. Even if students learn basic vocational skills, they may not still choose them as a viable career opportunity if they don’t have enough opportunity in the employment market. The informal economy, which is the largest in the country, needs to be involved in the process of enhancement of the NSQF. With a growing gig economy, the government needs to revise its labour laws and give acknowledgement to labour unions, which will go a long way into restructuring the labour market. Same goes for the jobs available in the private sector. A superior quality of vocational education and training needs as much cooperation from the industries as it needs from the government.
While vertical enhancement of the NSQF is pertinent, as mentioned earlier, it is also necessary to provide the provision of horizontal credit transfer at each corresponding level, so as to help a candidate hailing from outside the formal system integrate into the qualifications system. For instance, although Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) can theoretically help a person gain entry into the qualification system, it is necessary to teach that person the foundational and cognitive skills required for Lifelong Learning — which also corresponds to Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Only then will we be able to produce sustainable human capital in the form of lifelong learners. In a growing knowledge economy, it is important to produce learners who can self-evolve and adapt to the changing needs of the domestic and the global markets, while also continuously enriching their own learnings. Qualification Frameworks, as Allais explains, also have a bad reputation of feeding low-level skills and translating it into an economy that will sustain these low levels even in the labour markets — which has been the case in South Africa and most countries trying to work with National Qualification Frameworks.
However, this need not be replicated in India. NSQF and NHEQF should aim at including higher level skills and the government should facilitate the same by introducing ways to acknowledge them. The ongoing pandemic, for instance, has exposed the limited availability of healthcare workers and hence the need to nurture vocations in the healthcare sector by also paying them appropriately in the market.
The NEP 2020 rightly acknowledges the need to meet the SDG goals of access and lifelong learning. However, it needs to be supported by robust structural changes to ensure holistic development of learners. This will consequently lead to greater possibility of global and domestic mobility of skilled human capital, as aspired by the NSQF initially.
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Antara Sengupta is an Erasmus+ scholar pursuing an International Masters in Education Policies for Global Development. She is a former Research Fellow at ORF Mumbai.
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