Why I’m Confused About Current Technical Education In Indian Schools (And How We’re Making Do)
Last Tuesday, I waited 15 minutes outside my son’s 10th standard technical education lab in our Pune suburban school, wiping sweat off my neck in 38-degree April heat. When he finally came out, he leaned against the canteen wall, half-eaten lemon ice pop in one hand, a notebook full of unmarked pencil diagrams in the other. “The Arduino kit we’re supposed to be using still has half the parts missing,” he said. “Teacher just told us to copy the LED blink circuit from the blackboard again. We haven’t actually turned one on in six weeks.”
Three years ago, when the school announced this new tech ed program, I was thrilled. We got a glossy email saying the curriculum aligned with new education policy goals, focused on future-ready skills, with a brand-new maker lab, 3D printers, and coding classes. We paid the extra ₹1200 annual lab fee without a second thought; I thought this was exactly what my kid needed, a break from memorizing textbooks and a chance to build something real.
The cracks showed pretty quickly. That first year, the principal showed off the new 3D printer at annual day, but only the topper got to use it for her exhibition project. No other student had touched it. By year two, half the wires and sensors in the Arduino kits were gone, lost or broken, and no replacements had arrived. I brought it up at the parent-teacher meeting a few months back, and the tech ed teacher, Mrs. Desai, who’s been teaching for 18 years, pulled me aside to be honest.
The school got all the lab equipment as a CSR donation, she explained. It went straight into the brochures to boost admissions, but the administration never budgeted for replacement parts or teacher training. She’s supposed to teach 32 classes a week across 9th to 12th, and if a student breaks a ₹50 wire, she has to put in a purchase request that takes three months to approve, if it ever gets approved. She told me she used to teach basic wiring, carpentry, and small appliance repair in the old tech ed syllabus, and kids left with actual usable skills, no matter what career they picked. Then the school made her throw out the old workbenches and hammers to make space for the 3D printer that never works.
I heard a similar story from my sister in Gurgaon, whose 12th grader picked coding as his tech ed subject at one of the city’s top private schools. He can rattle off Python syntax by heart for the board exam, but when he wanted to build a simple app to track his bowling stats for weekend cricket, he had no idea where to start. All they do is memorize code for exams; no one ever teaches them how to build something that solves a problem they actually care about.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t just annoyed about the wasted lab fee. I was genuinely confused about what the point of current technical education in Indian schools even is. We threw out an old model that taught hands-on skills that worked for every kid, and replaced it with a fancy new model that’s all marketing, no substance. If it’s supposed to prepare kids for tech careers, why aren’t they allowed to touch the equipment? If it’s just another subject to score marks on the board, why call it technical education at all? Most families can’t afford the ₹15,000 a month fancy after-school coding academies that actually teach you to build things, so what happens to the rest?
A few of us parents in our apartment building got talking, and we decided we didn’t need to wait for the system to fix itself to do something small. We started a weekly maker hour in our building’s unused community room. Eight kids from 9th and 10th grade, each parent chips in ₹600 a month. We got three working second-hand Arduino kits from a college tech club that was upgrading, a used 3D printer from a local startup that just wanted it out of their storage, and a bin of basic tools and spare parts, all for less than ₹15,000 total. We found a third-year mechanical engineering student from the nearby college who comes in every Saturday for two hours, he charges ₹8,000 a month total for the whole group, which works out to less than ₹1000 per kid, way cheaper than any private academy.
I asked Mrs. Desai if the kids could bring our parts into the school lab once a month, to tie their regular class projects to actual building. She said yes immediately; she told me she hates just standing at the blackboard drawing diagrams, and would much rather help kids work through real problems. Now once a month, after their theory class, the kids get 40 minutes to actually build the circuit they drew, using our parts, and Mrs. Desai helps them troubleshoot. She knows more about basic problem-solving than our college kid does, from all her years of teaching hands-on work.
If you’re a parent confused about this too, there are small, low-cost things you can do that don’t require overhauling your kid’s whole schedule. First, talk to your child’s tech ed teacher: nine times out of ten, they’re just as frustrated as you are, and they’ll work with you if you can bring the materials. Second, check local engineering colleges and small startups: most are happy to offload old working equipment for cheap or free, because they’d rather give it to kids than throw it away. Third, split costs with a few other families: you don’t need a fancy lab to get started, just a table and a few basic parts.
My kid built a working automatic plant waterer for his school assignment last month. He copied the diagram for the exam (got full marks) and installed the working version on our balcony, where it waters our tomato plants every morning. He learned more in that one afternoon of troubleshooting than he did in two years of school tech ed classes.
I still don’t understand why things are the way they are, and I don’t have a solution for the whole system. I’m still confused about where all this focus on “future skills” is actually going, when most kids don’t get to practice the skills they’re supposed to be learning. Last Saturday, I watched a 12-year-old from the nearby government apartment complex who joins our maker hour for free get his first remote control car moving. He ran up and down the community hallway yelling, his rubber shoes scuffing the old tile. That’s the only thing I know for sure: technical education is supposed to be about doing, not drawing. We’re making it work for our small group, but I keep thinking how many more kids would get that chance if the system actually got out of the way.
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