An Accenture report predicts that 65% of the students starting their schools now may end up in jobs that don’t exist today.
Given the kind of fast-paced changes happening all around, the consultancy firm, therefore, advocates acquiring new skills to face future challenges. The skills to interact and build relationships, creative problem solving, staying relevant continuously, and addressing local market needs are some of them, the report observes.
Are India’s schools ready to impart such skills? India’s education system is modelled on the lines of the following popular Hindi saying: Padhoge, likhoge banoge nawab; kheloge, kudoge to hoge kharab [Only way to make it big is by acquiring reading/writing skills; focusing on other things is bound to fail].
The system thus perceived has produced engineers, doctors, science graduates, management professionals, and doctorates who may otherwise be quite brilliant but lack employability.
Only 25% Management Professionals, And 20% Engineers Are Employable
A 2019 World Economic Forum paper says: “It is shocking that among the 13 million youngsters that join the workforce each year, only one in four management professionals, one in five engineers and one in ten graduates are employable. India's skills gap and obsolete teaching curricula contribute to this trend, while forcing innumerable young people to settle for much less than they deserve.”
That is perhaps going to change with the introduction of the national credit framework. The government unveiled a draft national credit framework on October 19. It seeks “to enable the integration of academic and vocational domains to ensure flexibility and mobility between the two”.
Credits For Skills
Technicalities aside, the framework intends to send across a message that it is cool to be a debater, a sportsperson, a singer, a yoga teacher, an event organiser, a kathakali dancer or a painter while navigating through school and college years.
Here are some of the highlights of the framework:
A student will have to earn a certain number of credits every year besides clearing the final examination to get promoted to the next class. The credits can be earned in classrooms and through extracurricular activities.
The credits earned will be deposited in academic banks of credits accounts. The accounts will have details of degrees and credits earned.
There will be credits “for knowledge acquisition, hands-on training, positive social outcomes”.
The credits for learning hours and vocational training will ensure flexibility in the duration of study.
Government expects that enrolment at all levels will go up owing to the flexibility for students in terms of time spent in schools and colleges.
The proposal, sound in theory, may be difficult to implement as devising a neat credit points system for a multiplicity of tasks is going to be a huge ask. Different skills are viewed differently across the country. Kabaddi, for instance, may be in thing in Bihar and may not be so in some other parts. Given the cultural differences, will teachers in one part of the country give similar credit points for similar tasks across the country? More clarity is definitely required on this front.
Gyan And Hand Skills To Be Treated On A Par
Implementation challenges aside, the policy is going to go a long way in fixing some of the anomalies of the education system. The existing system gives a lot of premia to bookish knowledge. It incentivises the learning by rote method. As a result, students coming out of such a system struggle when faced with real life challenges. The new credit framework may ensure far greater exposure to students in terms of living experiences. Hence the higher probability of acquiring life skills and enhancing employability.
At the societal level, treating bookish knowledge at par with other skills may bring about a far bigger change. The caste system as we know it places gyan [knowledge] at the top and manual labour at the bottom of the hierarchical system. Once the superior-inferior dichotomy goes, it may weaken the hold of the already weakening caste system.
The credit framework system therefore deserves full credit for what it seeks to achieve and what it may end up achieving. Ensuring better employability of students is a need of the hour. And the dignity that comes with kheloge, kudoge to bhi banoge nawab will be icing on the cake.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
POPULAR