About 15-17 million people enter the job market every year, said Hari S Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Managing Director, Jubilant Bhartia Group, and President of the Confederation of Indian Industry, and with urbanisation and the rapidly changing job market, it is becoming increasingly important to link education with employability. Bhartia was speaking at the Plenary Session on ‘Capitalising on India’s Human Capital’ at the India Economic Summit.
Among the many issues plaguing the education system in India, lack of a robust and functioning education system at the primary level, a high-drop out rate from schools, especially seen in rural/semi-urban areas, has resulted in a large number of people entering the workforce straight after school, with few skills to help them find suitable employment or offer opportunities for career advancement. “The context for education is missing — there is no link between education and employability in their minds,” said Bhartia.
For India to realise its full potential — its is slated to be the third largest economy in the world — its population of 1.2 billion people, two-thirds of which lives in rural areas, needs to be suitably educated in order to be productive members of the workforce.
For this, major changes in the area of education and skill development are required, emphasised Venkat Matoory, Chief Executive Officer, Junior Achievement of India. “Children today are going through the same education system as earlier and the outcomes, therefore, will not be different.” The education system needs a second look with the objective of creating a “context for learning”, said Matoory. “We need a framework for industry to create a context —industry needs to play a very important role in education.”
While the government continues to address the issues at hand with initiatives such as the National Skills Development Corporation, new and many models should be looked at, at various levels — primary as well as secondary and higher education — said Harsh Manglik, Chairman and Geography Managing Director, Accenture India. Technology can be used to bridge the gap wherever possible and e-learning modules designed for specific streams of education should be used, suggested Manglik.
Given the magnitude of the task at hand, the government alone would not be able to address the issue suitably. The private sector should be allowed to play a greater role, even at the primary level, and allow free market forces to come into play. “If we allow market force mechanisms to come into play, of course with checks and balances in place, there will be advantages — for one, markets drive efficiency,” said Manglik. In terms of regulation on the part of the government, the emphasis should be on regulating outcomes, rather that processes.
Vocational training should be encouraged, and find greater recognition and acceptance to help trained people find suitable employment. Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Executive Director, Corporate and Legal Affairs, Tesco UK, suggested apprenticeship and the teaching of “soft skills which are very important, is making a person employable.”
Apart from imparting skills to make people employable, due attention must also be paid to making them self-employable, suggested Brij Kothari, Director, PlanetRead, India. We need to “entrepreneurise the rural community,” he said.