Bringing skills and education closer

Context: The placement of these skills and education ministries with one minister is the first step towards improving the employability of India’s workforce in a pandemic.

Challenges in skill development: It is a multi-dimensional problem: 

• One dimension relates to “employer connect”, which is essential for productive employment opportunities for skilled persons. 
• Another dimension is “entrepreneurship” or self-employment, which is becoming increasingly important with the rise of the “gig” economy.
  • With increased contractualisation of labour, the incentives for formal firms to train workers is declining even more.
• The third dimension relates to the link between skilling and education. The relative disconnect between academic and vocational education today has dual consequences: 
  • High unemployability among educated youth due to the absence of “practical” skills and 
  • A lack of resilience among vocational skill trainees is due to the absence of a broad range of foundational skills that are crucial for meaningful participation in work and life.

Impact of the pandemic:

• Loss of learning: The poorest and most vulnerable children lost out as the site of learning shifted from the classroom to online platforms.
• Altered nature of work: As workplaces increasingly shift to a hybrid model of functioning — new kinds of job roles have emerged, and a number of jobs have become redundant.
• For example, digital skills, which were considered transferable skills or soft skills until recently, have now become a core foundational skill — as important as literacy or numeracy.

Way Forward: Integrating skilling and basic education:

• Vocational education should not be viewed as distinct from school education but as “applied to learn” inclusive of holistic education.
  • Imparting holistic skills can help make school-to-work transition smoother. Recognising and imparting technical skills can make education more attuned to market and employer demand.
  • Integration of education and skilling pathways can provide flexible opportunities to out-of-school youth  (especially amid pandemic) to receive formal skilling and upskilling.
  • As workplaces are rapidly changing, a key skill needed for the future is the ability to “learn to learn” and “adapt” to new modes of working. Strong foundational skills are necessary to ensure that workers are adaptive to change.
• Two crucial changes at the conceptual level:
  • Mandate holistic skills provision across ITIs, schools, and colleges. 
  • Develop a common vocational skills curriculum and adopt a credit framework that helps improve mobility between skilling and general education.

Conclusion: “Skilling” continues to be a poor cousin of “education”. Hopefully, the recent decision to place these two crucial ministries under the charge of one cabinet minister is the first step in this long-overdue integration.