Edu dept ordered to conduct assessment on vocational courses

: The Madras High Court has directed the School Education Department to conduct an assessment to ascertain how many students opt for vocational courses and whether there are sufficient instructors for such vocational courses in schools in the state.
Passing the order recently on a PIL from one N Sampath of Salem District, the First Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan directed the Secretary and Director of the School Education Department (Vocational) to take a decision on the matter and communicate the same to the petitioner within a period of three months.
The court then disposed of the petition.

The PIL seeks to direct the concerned officials to take urgent steps to fill up the existing vacancies of vocational instructors in Higher Secondary schools throughout Tamil Nadu.
Stating that vocational education was a centrally-sponsored scheme aimed at promoting self-employment opportunities, improve job opportunities and to curtain school drop outs, the petitioner submitted that staff and instructors were sanctioned for 491 courses.
The state government had by a GO appointed a high-level committee to revamp vocational education in various aspects and as per the committees recommendations the branches of vocational course were consolidated into nine new courses to streamline the same.

However, the state government had not made any attempts to fill up the vacancies created even after the retirement of instructors, from 2009, for the nine approved courses, he argued.
He then alleged that because of non-filling up of the post of vocational instructors from 2009, many of the schools both aided, management and government wound up their vocational branch of education in spite of the fact of availability of sanctioned posts.
Hence, the petitioner made repeated requests and representations through the association of the retired instructors on November 14, 2016 to the authorities but to no avail.