The Government today held discussions with telecom and IT players as part of its ongoing initiative of interacting with varied sectors for development of a national vocational education curriculum framework.

The meeting was chaired by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal.

Earlier, the Ministry had also held discussions with the automobile sector following which a core group was constituted to develop a curriculum for vocational training for the sector.

Today's meeting was aimed at seeking the telecom and IT sectors' views about developing the course content and eliciting suggestions from the industry leaders.

Sibal said two task forces would be constituted to prepare the vocational curricula catering to the telecom and IT sectors.

During the deliberations, one of the participants from the telecom industry said the industry requires one lakh skilled hands alone to maintain the mobile towers while another said half a million jobs can be generated for manufacturing mobile phones.

In the design and IT sector about two lakh high-quality hands would be required, the meeting was told.

Sibal said the model being mooted for the vocational education would be flexible allowing easy entry and exit for students at different levels.

The vocational programmes could start from class IX onwards. It will have different levels.

The curriculum framework would be such that a student pursuing vocational education can even go on to complete his post graduate programme.

Further, one could have the option of joining jobs after class XII level or after graduation.

The Ministry had last week called a meeting of the state education ministers to discuss about vocational curriculum eduction framework, which was, however, poorly attended.

The Ministry has reconvened a second meeting in January.