“What is seen is that if a youth fails in Standard X, he drops out of the educational system and loses opportunities of any gainful employment. He faces the risk of entering the crime network. We don’t want any student to be called a failure. We want to identify skills of those who cannot complete their formal studies. Most importantly, this programme will ensure that the students don’t fall out of the education network, and that they qualify for gainful employment in good companies later,” education minister Vinod Tawde said.
“Under the Kaushalya Setu initiative, students of Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education, who fail to clear Class X or SSC examination, would be accommodated in the skill development courses, so that they do not lose a year,” a government official said.
“This programme of the Maharashtra government plans to evaluate 17 lakh students and give direction to them. No other state has taken such steps till now. If successful, this will be a historic measure. This is a bridge course for matriculation,” Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Union Minister of State, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (independent charge), said in Mumbai.
The estimated number of students to be given this opportunity this year is 24,000. “These are the number of students who could not pass the retest after Standard X examination. We are still in the process of conducting counselling sessions for these students. They will then be issued courses accordingly,” Prachi Sathe, Officer on Special Duty, Department of Secondary Education, told The Sunday Guardian.
But this programme will be available only to those students who fail in their examinations from this year onwards. All those students who failed in previous years will have to find out vocational training opportunities from other courses offered by the government.
A total of 15 courses will be made available to students. These will be in the fields of apparel, home furnishing, electronics and hardware, construction, capital goods, food processing, plumbing, retail, craft.
WHY KAUSHALYA SETU
Officials of the education department said that the purpose behind of introducing “Kaushalya Setu” was saving thousands of students from the clutches of crime, depression, unemployment, feeling of worthlessness, mental diseases and addiction. “Also, once they fail in standard 10, they generally slip out of the net and do not return to the fold of education. Their chances of employability also go down substantially,” deputy Secretary Suvarna Kharat said. “When a student is unable to clear an examination, it is not the student who has failed. It is we, who have failed. Because we have failed to test him on the subjects that interest him. In Maharashtra, the concept of failed students will be outdated now. Nobody will fail,” Vinod Tawde said.
The Maharashtra Secondary Education department has identified 100 polytechnic colleges for the enrollment of students in the 15 courses. Nearly 3,000 instructors will help skill the enrolled youth. “We wanted the students to feel a sense of pride about their education. So, we identified potytechnic colleges for skill disbursement,” Kharat said.
The courses will last for six months. In all, 80% of the course content will be practical-based. The students will be given certification under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana. This year, the government conducted aptitude test of nearly 17 lakh students of standard 10 in June. As per the results of the test, their inclination in different fields like arts, science, commerce, fine arts, technical field, was tested. They were then allotted their interest field accordingly.
In the future, the courses will be designed and graded in such a way that the students should be able to continue doing higher vocational courses or return to formal education without repeating their standard 10 examination.