New Delhi: The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) is organising a three day International conference on 'Integration of Academic Courses with Vocational Education in Secondary Schools', which was inaugurated by Anshu Vaish, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, here on Friday.

Vocational Education & Training (VET) being one of the key elements of the nation's education initiative needs to be redefined to make it flexible, relevant, inclusive and sustainable. It is in this context that the NIOS is organising this conference to deliberate upon the impending challenges and issues and develop a framework to establish linkages of skill training through vocational education at secondary school level with emphasis on knowledge base through academic subjects.

The various sessions of the conference centre on the sub-themes of vocational skills and training to empower citizens; designing the curriculum and quality framework to strengthen the impact of vocational courses, use of technology in providing education; developing framework for the Recognition of Prior Learning and development of Assessment and Certification Framework.

Representatives from the Trade and Industry Associations, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Vocational Education Institutes, Educational planners and administrators and international experts in open learning are expected to participate in this conference. IANS