Centre launches World Bank’s ‘jobs at your doorstep’ report

New Delhi, Nov 22 (IANS) Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan along with Minister of Labour and Employment Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday launched a World Bank report titled ‘Jobs at Your Doorstep: A Jobs Diagnostics for Young People’ that covers six states in India.

Pradhan complimented the World Bank team for the detailed report and urged them to adopt a pan-India framework as well.

“Such in-depth diagnostics on skilling and jobs will enable stakeholders to create new architectures and make progressive policies for empowering our population,” the minister said.

The Jobs at Your Doorstep report serves as both a diagnostic and roadmap to providing strategic linkages and convergence between education and the jobs agenda of India. It goes deep into the job landscape of six states — Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan — and identifies key priority sectors and roles that offer the highest employment potential for young people graduating from secondary school.

The report is a skills gap analysis that attempts to align trades offered in schools industry-specific needs of the districts where the schools are present. The study was initiated to reimagine the skill education offered through in-depth primary as well as secondary research in six ‘STARS’ states.

The World Bank assists the Ministry of Education with its programme called Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) covering six states, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan (collectively the STARS states). STARS Scheme has a national component under which key reforms are shared and disseminated for implementation.

The report underscores the significant benefits of embedding skill-based education from Classes 9-12 to prepare students for diverse career paths relying on a bottom-up approach, going deep in districts of the six states. These present varying socio-economic profiles offer a nuanced view of how industry and government can both contribute towards the jobs agenda.

Highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to transform India into a global skills hub, Pradhan said that the population of the country will be the driver of the global economy. For this, skilling needs to begin right at schools and NEP 2020 has envisioned mainstreaming skilling in schools, he added.

The Government of India has an ambitious plan to transform the economy towards a high-income country status by 2047. To achieve the goal of India becoming a productive economy, the country needs to urgently address challenges facing its employment landscape and prepare its workforce, the official statement said.

Multifaceted, dynamic, convergent approaches aligned to educational reform and market-linked skill development (SD) will help India reach its job growth potential. Key reforms by the Government of India will help strengthen the vocational education sector to become a decentralised, local market-led, inclusive and fiscally sustainable sector, to train the workforce for the skills required for a high-income India, the statement added.

The Ministry of Education has made major strides on this front by launching the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2023. Both policies emphasize the importance of skilling in schools, with the NEP setting ambitious targets of 50 per cent of students accessing skill education by 2025 and all secondary schools offering skill education by 2030.

Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Sanjay Kumar; Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Atul Kumar Tiwari; Country Director, World Bank, India, Auguste Tano Kouame were also present on the occasion.

–IANS

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