Pre-vocational courses in IX, X key to plug skills gap?

Experts feel that India today has a huge challenge in vocational education. The government aims to improve the percentage of people with formal skills from 12 to 25 by the end of the XII Five-Year Plan (2012-2017). This is proposed to be done through vocational education and training. Academicians feel that offering pre-vocational courses in Classes IX and X themselves can help meet the challenge to a large extent. At present, only 8 per cent high schools impart vocational education. To improve this, pre-vocational courses can be offered as an add-on or as an option to another subject, like the third language, to encourage students to take it up.  Do let us know your opinion and suggestions here.