ABSTRACT:
Education plays an important role in giving meaningful direction to human life. The three levels of Indian education system are primary education, secondary education and higher education. Primary education is the foundation of the education system on the basis of which secondary education and higher education are built. Secondary education works to connect primary education and higher education. In the course of development of Indian education system after independence, various commissions have talked about providing vocational education under secondary education, of which Mudaliar Commission is prominent. In secondary education, vocation-based courses are visible partially in the curriculum of class 9th and 10th and clearly in the curriculum of class 11th and 12th, which helps in increasing the vocational interest of the students. At the secondary level, humanities and arts, science, commerce, agriculture disciplines are based on vocational interest. Students at the secondary level select subjects according to their interest and ability. This selection is due to their interest towards that profession. Work done with interest is an indicator of the progress of the individual and his society. Apart from this, the socio-economic status of students also plays an effective role in the selection of their subject and profession. The main objective of the present study is to do a comparative study of the vocational interest and socio-economic status of urban and rural high school level students. For the study, 60 boys and 60 girls have been selected from 120 students studying in class 11 of CBSE board schools located in urban and rural areas of Mirzapur district (U.P.) by stratified probability sampling method. For collecting data, 'Vocational Interest Record' prepared by Dr. S.P. Kulshreshtha and 'Socio-economic Status Scale' prepared by Dr. Ashok K. Kalia and Dr. Sudhir Sahu have been used. The study found a difference in the vocational interests of urban and rural secondary level students, but no difference was found in their socio-economic status.