National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS), 1961

Policy Update
Shivali Yadav

Background

Parliament passed the Apprentices Act in 1961, and it remains the legal basis for apprenticeship training in India. NATS is often described as a 1961 scheme, and some secondary sources cite 1973 as its launch year. Neither date tells the whole story. The official NATS portal says the scheme runs under the Apprentices Act, 1961, as amended in 1973 (NATS Portal, n.d.-a).

This article therefore treats 1961 as the year of the parent law and 1973 as the year of the amendment under which the graduate and diploma-level scheme operates. Websites that call 1973 the launch year (Government Schemes Updates, 2026) are not contradicting this, but I could not find an official source that states it in those words, so the launch-year wording is avoided here.

The problem the scheme set out to address was a familiar one. In the 1960s and early 1970s, India’s technical institutions were producing engineers and diploma holders whose classroom training had very little contact with a real factory floor or workshop. The Apprentices Act gave the government the authority to require establishments above a certain size to take on apprentices and to set minimum stipend obligations. NATS was built on that authority. It offered fresh graduates and diploma holders a year of supervised, on-the-job training before they entered the job market in earnest.

Today the scheme sits under the Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education. On the ground, it is run through four regional bodies, the Boards of Apprenticeship Training and Practical Training (BOAT/BOPT), located in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Kanpur (Government Schemes Updates, 2026; National Portal of India, n.d.). Each Board is the implementing agency for its region (Vision IAS, 2025). Policy oversight rests with the Central Apprenticeship Council (CAC), a statutory body under the Apprentices Act, 1961, with members drawn from central ministries, state governments, employer bodies and worker organisations (PIB, 2025a).

NATS and India’s Education and Skilling Landscape

NATS occupies a particular place in India’s policy map. Unlike most skilling programmes, it is housed in the education ministry rather than the skilling ministry, and it is aimed at people who already hold a degree or diploma from a recognised institution. Its job is to connect the formal higher-education system with employers, and it does this through the legal machinery of the Apprentices Act. Under that Act, establishments above a certain size are expected to engage apprentices, in a proportion of their workforce that one industry guide reports as between 2.5 and 15 percent (Alp Consulting, 2025).

Host establishments include central and state government bodies, public sector undertakings and private companies (TankhaPay, 2025). The scheme also fits into wider national priorities. When its scope was widened in December 2021 to include general-stream graduates, the move was described as consistent with the National Education Policy 2020, which stresses closer integration of general and vocational education (DMC Finishing School, 2025). NATS also has a sister programme, the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), run by a different ministry for a different group of young people. The two are compared later in this article.

Objectives

NATS was designed around one gap: what a technical degree or diploma certifies a person knows, versus what an employer needs a new hire to do on day one. Its specific objectives can be set out as follows.

1. Practical training. To give on-the-job training to technically qualified youth, namely engineering graduates, diploma holders and, since 17 December 2021, general-stream graduates in humanities, science and commerce.
2. Bridging education and work. To ensure that the move from formal education into employment involves real workplace exposure, and not only an academic credential.
3. A talent pipeline for industry. To give establishments a structured way to absorb and assess fresh graduates over a defined period before making any longer-term commitment.
4. Shared financial burden. To split stipend costs between the state and industry, so that no single party (the apprentice, the employer or the public exchequer) carries the whole cost.

The first two objectives describe what the scheme does for the apprentice. The training itself is the point: someone who has spent a year in a working establishment arrives at their first job with skills that a syllabus alone does not provide (Vision IAS, 2025). The third objective looks at the same arrangement from the employer’s side. A year of apprenticeship works as an extended trial, and employers are not obliged to retain the apprentice at the end of it. The fourth is a matter of design. The Central Government reimburses part of the stipend, which lowers the cost of hosting an apprentice and makes employers more willing to do so (Government Schemes, 2025).

One further aim needs to be treated separately. In 2025, the Central Apprenticeship Council started to speak of reducing apprentice dropout and making apprenticeship a competitive option alongside regular employment (PIB, 2025a). This is a recent policy priority stated at the CAC’s 38th meeting, and it should not be read as one of the scheme’s original objectives. It came out of the stipend discussion described below.

Functioning

Duration and eligible categories

The standard NATS placement is twelve months of on-the-job training. The official portal describes the duration as ranging from six months to one year, because some categories, including the sandwich-course categories, follow a different schedule (NATS Portal, n.d.-a). Eligible categories are Graduate, Graduate Sandwich, Technician (Diploma), Technician Sandwich and Technician (Vocational) apprentices (NATS Portal, n.d.-a). From 17 December 2021, the scheme was also extended to general-stream graduates such as B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com. holders, who can be engaged on the same reimbursement terms as engineering graduates (M&HR, n.d.). The date comes from a summary of the Ministry’s extension; readers who need the exact notification should confirm it with the NATS portal.

Stipend and cost-sharing

Financially, the scheme’s most distinctive feature is cost-sharing. A minimum stipend is set centrally under the Apprenticeship Rules, 1992, made under the parent Act, and revised from time to time by Gazette notification. The Central Government reimburses the employer for 50 percent of the prescribed minimum stipend. The employer pays the remainder and pays the whole of any amount above the statutory minimum (Government Schemes, 2025). Figure 1 shows how the process moves from registration to reimbursement.

The most recent stipend revision shows how far the scheme has grown. At the 38th meeting of the Central Apprenticeship Council, held on 26 May 2025 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, under Jayant Chaudhary, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the Council recommended a 36 percent increase in the minimum stipend for both NATS and NAPS (PIB, 2025a). The recommendation was notified as Gazette Notification G.S.R. 610(E), dated 3 September 2025 and published on 11 September 2025 under the Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025, which raised the monthly minimum stipend range from Rs 5,000–9,000 to Rs 6,800–12,300 from the date of publication (Apprenticeship & Internship Portal, 2025).

For Graduate/Degree apprentices, the rate moved from Rs 9,000 to Rs 12,300 per month (Government Schemes Updates, 2026; Apprenticeship & Internship Portal, 2025). By simple arithmetic, that is an increase of about 36.7 percent (12,300 ÷ 9,000 = 1.367), close to the Council’s headline figure of 36 percent. Future revisions are to be linked to the Consumer Price Index every two years, so that a fresh Council recommendation is no longer needed each time (PIB, 2025a).

Figure 2. Minimum monthly stipend before and after the Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025. Source: Apprenticeship & Internship Portal (2025); Government Schemes Updates (2026).

NATS and NAPS

NATS is regularly confused with NAPS, so the difference is worth stating plainly. NAPS was launched in August 2016 and continued as NAPS-2 from 2022–23. It falls under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and mainly serves ITI pass-outs and school-level or vocational-certificate apprentices. NATS remains under the Ministry of Education and is aimed at graduate engineers, diploma holders, and non-engineering graduates (PIB, 2025b). Both run under the same parent legislation but serve different parts of the youth population.

Table 1. NATS and NAPS compared.

Registration and administration go through the scheme’s portal, upgraded to NATS 2.0 at nats.education.gov.in, which replaced the older mhrdnats.gov.in interface. The portal handles candidate registration, establishment onboarding, apprenticeship contracts, training logs, and completion certificates (National Apprenticeship Training Scheme portal, n.d.).

Performance

NATS now operates at a large scale. Over 5.23 lakh apprentices were enrolled in the financial year 2024–25 (PIB, 2025a). A later official release compares the two schemes for calendar year 2025 and gives the same 5.23 lakh figure for NATS, against 11.84 lakh apprentices engaged under NAPS (PIB, 2025b).

The two releases use different reporting periods (financial year and calendar year) yet quote an identical number, so the figures should not be mixed across releases. Using only the 2025 comparison from a single release, NATS accounts for 5.23 out of a combined 17.07 lakh apprentices (5.23 + 11.84), which is about 31 percent, or just under a third of the total. Note that the release says NAPS apprentices were “engaged”, while the NATS figure is described as enrolment, so the comparison is approximate.

Figure 3. Apprentices under NATS and NAPS, calendar year 2025 (lakh). Source: PIB (2025b).

On financing, a total outlay of Rs 3,054 crore was approved for the scheme for 2021–22 to 2025–26, and its continuation was likewise approved through 2025–26 (Government Schemes Updates, 2026; PIB, 2025b). This is a multi-year commitment, not a series of short annual allocations. Anyone relying on the scheme beyond that cycle should check for a later extension.

The stipend reform is probably the most significant recent change. The Council presented the 36 percent increase and the shift to CPI-linked revision as steps toward reducing apprentice dropout and making apprenticeship more attractive to young people (PIB, 2025a). This article does not claim that NATS stipends were below market, because none of the sources reviewed publish a benchmark comparing them with entry-level salaries. Alongside the stipend revision, the CAC has approved an Apprenticeship Embedded Degree/Diploma Programme (AEDP), which is meant to build apprenticeship training into degree and diploma curricula and allow flexible delivery, including online and blended formats and placements at client locations outside India (PIB, 2026).

Emerging Issues

Some structural questions remain even after the recent changes.

Stipend adequacy. The September 2025 revision raised the floor, but the cost-sharing model still relies on employers paying the stipend first and claiming reimbursement later. Smaller establishments may find that administrative and cash-flow burden harder to manage. This is a plausible concern, not a finding: none of the official sources reviewed report data on delayed reimbursements or on stipends in smaller cities.

Regional implementation. The scheme is delivered through four regional Boards (BOAT/BOPT), each serving several states. The sources reviewed do not publish regional or state-wise enrolment, so it is not possible to say whether the number of Board offices affects awareness or uptake in less-connected areas. Publishing state-wise figures would allow this question to be tested instead of assumed.

Two similar schemes. NATS and NAPS run in parallel under different ministries, each with its own portal, eligibility rules, and stipend schedule. This is historically explicable, but first-time applicants can find it hard to tell which scheme applies to them.

Outcomes after training. NATS certifies completion and gives apprentices a credential to show at interviews, and completion does not guarantee a job (Government Schemes Updates, 2026). Post-apprenticeship placement or retention is not reported as prominently as enrolment, which makes the scheme’s labour-market impact hard to judge.

Way Forward

Several directions seem likely to matter as NATS moves beyond its 2021–26 approval cycle. CPI-linked stipend revision should keep the scheme financially competitive, provided the automatic adjustment is actually applied on schedule and does not slip back into infrequent, ad hoc revisions.

Expanding the Apprenticeship Embedded Degree/Diploma Programme could loosen the current sequence of degree first and apprenticeship afterwards, by placing structured industry exposure inside the academic timetable. If institutions become the point of placement, this might also reduce dependence on a single centralised portal process.

Coordinated messaging from the two ministries on the difference between NATS and NAPS would help applicants reach the right scheme without wasted effort. Publishing state-wise enrolment would help show whether regional gaps exist.

Finally, more systematic post-apprenticeship tracking would show whether the training leads to lasting employment. Following up with apprentices some months after certification, to see whether they were retained, found work elsewhere, or remained unplaced, would tell administrators and the public whether the investment in linking classroom and workplace is producing results.

References

Alp Consulting. (2025, December 24). What is NATS? A complete guide to the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme. https://alp.consulting/what-is-nats/

Apprenticeship & Internship Portal. (2025). Gazette Notification G.S.R. 610(E), Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025 [stipend revision].

DMC Finishing School. (2025, February 15). NATS training program. https://dmcfs.in/nats/

Government Schemes Updates. (2026, June 2). National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS): Stipend, eligibility & registration. https://govtschemesindia.com/national-apprenticeship-training-scheme/

Government Schemes. (2025). National Apprenticeship Training Scheme, citing Ministry of Education.

M&HR. (n.d.). National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS). https://www.mhrspl.com/national-apprenticeship-training-scheme-nats.html

National Apprenticeship Training Scheme, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. (n.d.-a). About NATS. https://nats.education.gov.in/about-us.php

National Apprenticeship Training Scheme, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. (n.d.). NATS 2.0 official portal. https://nats.education.gov.in/ (formerly http://www.mhrdnats.gov.in/)

National Portal of India. (n.d.). Website of National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS), instituted by the Board of Apprenticeship Training/Practical Training. https://www.india.gov.in/

Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2025a, May 26). Central Apprenticeship Council recommends 36% increase in stipend for youth under National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme and National Apprenticeship Training Scheme. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2131391&reg=48&lang=2

Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2025b). National Apprenticeship Promotion and Training Schemes. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2226495&reg=48&lang=2

Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2026). National Apprenticeship and Training Schemes. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2243987&reg=3&lang=1

TankhaPay. (2025, June 9). NATS 2.0 registration, stipend, eligibility & certificate guide. https://www.tankhapay.com/blog/nats/

About the Contributor: 

Shivali Yadav is pursuing an M.A. in Liberal Studies at Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj, and is an IMPRI intern. Her work focuses on gender, education, youth, and public policy, with interests in educational equity and qualitative research. 

Acknowledgement

The author sincerely thanks the reviewers and editorial team for their valuable comments, constructive suggestions, and guidance. Their feedback helped improve the clarity, structure, and analytical depth of this policy update.

Reviewers: Purba jagganath, Arya gupta

Disclaimer:

All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.

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