By Anish Srikrishna, CEO of Times Professional Learning
As a worrying skill gap affects employability across sectors, we need to rethink the training and development of our workforce. The National Education Policy 2020, with a focus on skill development, will be the key to restructuring the educational ecosystem to improve the employability of future generations.
How will the National Education Policy help in promoting employment?
Technological advances of the last few decades have transformed every aspect of the working landscape, leading to a paradigm shift in the skill requirements from employers. In the context of this rapidly evolving work culture, the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 will be a key factor in the overall effort to channelize our manpower to lead the change. This revolutionary policy has laid down the roadmap for intensive educational reform, particularly in higher education, with emphasis on developing technical and soft skills among graduates and postgraduate students.
In fact, employability is one of the focus of NEP 2020, which recognizes the role of education in imparting the right skills to the students. This is also in line with the policy target 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. The policy recognizes the importance of changes in the educational system to meet this goal.
solving skill challenges
This re-evaluation of the educational ecosystem becomes imperative when we consider the worrying skill gap that is affecting employability across sectors. The National Council for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (NCSDE), citing data from the International Labor Organization (ILO), predicts a skill deficit of 29 million by 2030. This gap has already made an impact, with 53% of Indian businesses reportedly unable to. Hire suitable candidates due to lack of future skills.
Importantly, this skill gap exists across sectors ranging from IT/ITES to manufacturing, pharma and infrastructure. This has very real economic costs, as revealed by a report by Accenture, which predicts a loss of US$1.97 trillion in the country’s GDP growth over the next 10 years. NCSDE points to our inadequate education system as the main reason behind this skill gap. Interestingly, it also accuses companies of failing to ensure in-job training.
break away from the traditional path
It is against this background that we must assess the important role that NEP 2020 can play in reversing the course. Following are some of the key initiatives that can help in increasing the employability of the emerging workforce:
Holistic Education: Instead of the traditional content-heavy and rote-learning approach, NEP emphasizes a more holistic approach. It calls for a creative and multidisciplinary curriculum that includes the humanities, sports and fitness, languages, culture, arts and crafts, in addition to science and mathematics. It recognizes soft skills such as communication, collaboration, teamwork and resilience as ‘life skills’. This transformed approach is designed to help students develop academic expertise with critical leadership skills that can help them along their career path.
multidisciplinary approach: Here, NEP 2020 breaks the mold of classifying subject choices under the traditional buckets of Science, Commerce and Humanities, allowing a more cross-sectional selection of courses. This signals a shift towards competency-based learning that helps students further hone their core skills rather than following a rigorous course selection process.
Emphasis on Vocational Education: Perhaps, the most important component of NEP 2020 in promoting employability is the inclusion of vocational education and training. This ensures that the entire ecosystem of schools, colleges and universities will now include vocational education as a part of their curriculum. This could potentially add up to more than 280,000 schools and over 40,000 higher education institutions offering vocational training.
With the advent of Industry 4.0, hiring managers are increasingly looking for people who can combine field expertise with digital competence and industry-based skills. NEP 2020 is an important step towards restructuring the educational ecosystem with an aim to meet the rapidly changing needs of employers. Vocational educational institutions can play a vital role in facilitating academic learning through their industry-led curriculum and mentorship. Along with incorporating professional reskilling and upskilling, these institutes also involve Corporate India as an important stakeholder in ensuring in-job training.
Disclaimer: Content Produced by Times Professional Learning (TPL)
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