National Scheme of Apprenticeship Training (NATS)

What is the National Scheme of Apprenticeship Training?

The National Scheme of Apprenticeship Training (NATS) is a programme of the Ministry of Education that gives young technical graduates practical, on-the-job training in industry. It operates under the Apprentices Act, 1961 and the guidelines of the Central Apprenticeship Council, and is delivered through four Regional Boards of Apprenticeship Training (BOATs) located at Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai and Kolkata.

According to the scheme listing on the myScheme portal, NATS places candidates in around 10,000 industrial establishments for a structured one-year apprenticeship. The apprentice works alongside professionals in a real workplace and receives a monthly stipend, half of which is paid by the Central Government and half by the employer.

NATS is designed to close the gap between classroom learning and workplace practice, a graduate engineer or diploma technician gains recognised industry experience that makes them more employable, without the establishment having to treat them as a permanent employee.

Key features

• One-year apprenticeship in industry for technical graduates.
• Monthly stipend shared 50:50 between the Central Government and the employer.
• Around 10,000 establishments participate across the country.
• Administered through four Regional BOATs (Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai, Kolkata).
• Fully online registration and placement at nats.education.gov.in.

Who is eligible for NATS?

You can apply if you are:

• A graduate engineer: holding a degree in engineering or technology.
• A diploma holder (technician): holding a diploma in engineering or technology.
• A 10+2 vocational pass-out: having completed the vocational stream at the 10+2 level.

You cannot apply if:

• You do not hold one of the qualifying certificates above, NATS is for technical graduates, diploma technicians and 10+2 vocational pass-outs only.
• You are looking for a permanent job, NATS is a training scheme, not employment, and it does not guarantee a job at the end.
• You have already completed the same apprenticeship, the one-year training is not meant to be repeated in the same trade.

What stipend does a NATS apprentice receive?

According to the scheme listing on myScheme, the monthly stipend is set by category and shared equally between the Central Government and the employer:

These are the rates recorded on the myScheme listing. Stipend rates under the apprenticeship framework are revised from time to time by the government, so always confirm the current figure on the NATS portal or in the offer from the establishment before accepting a contract.

What documents are required for NATS?

How to apply for a NATS apprenticeship

1. Go to the NATS portal at nats.education.gov.in and register as a student.
2. Complete your profile with basic, educational and contact details, then add your bank details and training preferences.
3. Upload your qualifying degree or diploma certificate, passport-size photograph and bank passbook in the required formats.
4. Browse and apply for apprenticeship opportunities listed by establishments in your field.
5. When an establishment offers a contract, review and accept it through the portal.
6. The Regional Board of Apprenticeship Training (BOAT) approves the contract, and your placement is finalised. The apprenticeship then runs for one year with the monthly stipend paid as scheduled.

Help and contact for NATS

• NATS support email: natssupport@aicte-india.org
• Portal: nats.education.gov.in
• Regional Boards of Apprenticeship Training at Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai and Kolkata handle placements for their respective regions.

Registration on the NATS portal is free. No agent can secure an apprenticeship for you: establishments select candidates directly through the portal, and the Regional Board finalises the contract.

How to check your application status

NATS does not issue a single tracking number the way a scholarship or pension scheme does, because the "application" is really a sequence of stages: profile registration, applying to establishments, and then contract approval. Check progress at each stage separately.

1. Log in to your NATS profile. Go to nats.education.gov.in and sign in with the credentials you used to register. Your dashboard shows your profile completion status, the establishments you have applied to, and whether any of them have responded.
2. Check the status against each establishment you applied to. The portal marks each application as pending, shortlisted, offered a contract, or rejected by that particular establishment. Because NATS lets you apply to multiple establishments, you may see different statuses against different employers at the same time.
3. Watch for a contract offer notification. When an establishment agrees to take you on, the portal shows a contract offer that you must review and accept online. This step will not happen automatically, if you do not act on it within the window given, the offer can lapse.
4. Confirm Regional Board approval. After you accept an establishment's offer, the relevant Regional Board of Apprenticeship Training (Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai or Kolkata, depending on your region) has to approve the contract before the apprenticeship formally starts. Your portal status changes to reflect this approval; if it stays at "contract accepted" for an unusually long time, that is the point to follow up.
5. Follow up by email if the portal status does not move. Write to natssupport@aicte-india.org with your registration ID, the establishment name, and the stage where you are stuck. Because approvals run through a Regional Board rather than a single central office, email follow-up naming the specific Board is more useful than a general query.
6. Once the apprenticeship has started, track your stipend separately. The government's share of the stipend is paid by DBT into the bank account you registered. If a monthly payment does not arrive, check that your bank details on the portal are still correct before raising it with NATS support, since a mismatched or closed account is the most common reason a DBT payment fails silently.

There is no SMS or helpline-call tracking system for NATS; the portal login and the support email are the two channels that actually carry status information.

Common reasons for rejection

Rejection under NATS can happen at two different points, either an establishment declines to shortlist you, or the Regional Board declines to approve a contract you already accepted. The reasons differ:

• Qualification does not match the apprenticeship trade. Establishments hire apprentices for specific technical trades tied to their operations. A mismatch between your degree/diploma stream and the trade you applied for is one of the most common reasons an establishment passes over an application. Fix: apply to openings that genuinely match your engineering discipline or vocational stream, rather than applying broadly to whatever is listed.
• Incomplete profile at the time of application. If your educational details, bank information, or uploaded documents are incomplete when you apply, some establishments will not consider the application at all. Fix: finish and verify every section of your NATS profile before applying to any opening, not after.
• Document upload rejected on format or quality grounds. A blurry scan of the degree certificate, a photograph that does not meet the specification, or a certificate that does not clearly show your name and qualification can cause a document to be rejected during verification. Fix: re-upload a clear, correctly cropped scan of the original certificate rather than a photograph of a printout.
• Aadhaar or bank details that do not match your other records. Since the government's share of the stipend is paid by DBT, a bank account that is not in your own name, or Aadhaar details that do not match your educational certificates, can hold up contract approval at the Regional Board stage even after an establishment has accepted you. Fix: make sure the name on your Aadhaar, degree certificate and bank account are consistent before submitting bank details.
• Missed response window on a contract offer. When an establishment offers a contract, it is time-bound. Not accepting it within the window given lets the offer lapse, which then shows up as if the application failed. Fix: check the NATS dashboard regularly once you have applied to openings, since offers are not always followed up with a phone call.
• Already completed an apprenticeship in the same trade. Since NATS is meant to be a one-time training period per qualification, a Regional Board can decline to approve a second apprenticeship contract in the same trade for a candidate who has already completed one. Fix: this is not something to appeal, if you have completed a NATS apprenticeship already, you are not eligible to repeat it in the same trade.
• Establishment's apprentice quota is already filled. Sometimes an application is not rejected for any fault of the candidate, the establishment simply has no open apprentice seats left in that cycle. Fix: apply to more than one establishment at a time rather than waiting on a single application, since NATS allows parallel applications.

None of these are appealable through a formal grievance process the way a scholarship rejection might be, the practical remedy in almost every case is to correct the profile or documents and reapply to the same or a different establishment.