TISS plans to Set up a National Vocational Training University

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) is going to set up a school for vocational education on its Deonar campus. TISS has taken this step towards a larger plan to set up a national vocational training university. The school will offer two-year-long certificate courses and students who pass out will qualify as technicians. TISS and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which is promoting vocational education at top institutes in India, will sign a memorandum about the new school. The AICTE will provide financial assistance of Rs 10 crore for three years to TISS.

The AICTE, through the National Vocational Educational Qualification Framework (NVEQF), wants to develop and manage vocational education in the country and integrate it with academic streams of higher technical education, noted a statement released by the AICTE. Apart from training students, the school will focus on research in vocational education, conduct studies on skill requirements, build content for various sectors, develop teaching methodologies and pedagogy, train the trainers, and prepare a system for measuring skill assessment.

The school will set up a joint working group with members from TISS and the AICTE, which shall regularly review the working of the courses.