Vocational course colleges to turn ITIs

Merely 4% Of Students Join Apprenticeship

The Maharashtra government has floated a plan to convert MCVC (minimum competency vocational course) institutes into Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). There are 990 MCVC institutes in Maharashtra, with nearly 40 of them in Mumbai.

MCVC institutes are popular among students who are not able to join the mainstream or an ITI. Under MCVC, a student pursues four trades and two languages after class X and is awarded an HSC and an MCVC certificate. But with no other state now offering MCVC courses, the certificate holds little value.

“Our internal study shows that merely 4.3% of the students who join the programme are absorbed in apprenticeship. It is criminal if our education system is not translating into jobs,” said Aseem Gupta, principal secretary, skill development and entrepreneurship development. While there are 75,000 seats in MCVC institutes in the state, about 50,000 admissions take place each year.

“We are not shutting down a single institute or reducing any seat,” he said. “We are asking existing institutes to upgrade to ITIs so that student get better quality education and training. Moreover, existing teachers will also be absorbed in the ITIs,” he added.

The plan will increase the student capacity at ITIs which have a huge demand. There are an average 2.5 candidates vying for each ITI seat in Maharashtra, based on the last year’s admission data. “We also want to convert the 53 additional government technical schools to ITIs,” said an officer.

Institutes not wanting to upgrade also have the option to convert their existing set-ups to vocational training institutes. The plan has met with resistance from several unions.

MCVC institutes were started across the country in 1988. The central government gave 75% grants and the state pitched in with its 25%. The idea was that maybe not everyone was cut out for higher education and after class X, in higher school, these students they could pick up some trades apart from the two class XII language papers and later take up a job or start a small unit based on the skills picked up.

Seeing the low number of MCVC students picking up apprenticeship, the scheme was discontinued in 1997 across India. But the Maharashtra government continued to offer it, spending Rs 800 crore each year on these aided institutes. A large part is spent on the salaries of 8,000 faculty members.