The World Bank has recommended nine key action areas for six states in the country to address the skill gaps and enhance productivity. These suggestions are in sync with the plan to transformg India into a global skills hub and make progressive policies to empower the population, as outlined by the Union government.
As per the World Bank ‘Jobs at Your Doorstep’ report, the key areas that six states–Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala–need to work on include: expanding access to skill education, offering broader/multi skill courses in school, trade mapping, focus on employability and technical skills, bettering infrastructure, roping in qualified and industry-trained teachers etc.
As per an analysis by World Bank, agriculture and service sectors offer a large opportunity for school based skilling in these states. Manufacturing MSMEs and large industries, on the other hand, prefer offering opportunities to qualified candidates, which schools don’t generally train.
The report suggests that within agriculture, farm productivity, horticulture, and dairy farming can cater to the majority of high demand jobs for “school to work” in the six states. In services, the sectors are: BFSI, beauty and wellness, healthcare, fashion etc. And in information technology, they are IT software development & digital media.
The report says that the demand for each trade is different all over the country. Job prospects for trades like agriculture and manufacturing are sensitive to local context. Hence, state governments need to enable district level offices to lead “trade-mapping”.
The World Bank suggests states to set up skill hubs too. These are nodal skill centres identified to provide skill development and skill education training opportunities to target population segments from class sixth to twelth, as well as school dropouts. These hubs involve transforming large secondary schools into centers of vocational learning. They serve as centralized facilities equipped with advanced infrastructure and resources, offering students hands-on training in broad-based trades and employability skills.
The key features of the hubs are: (a) centralized facilities: consolidate resources for practical, industry-relevant training; (b) accessibility: designed to cater to a wide range of students from multiple schools in the vicinity; and (c) alignment with industry needs: ensure training programs are aligned with the demands of local economies.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2023 emphasize the importance of skilling in schools, with the NEP setting ambitious targets of 50% of students accessing skill education by 2025 and all secondary schools offering skill education by 2030.
The World Bank assists the Union ministry of education with its programme called Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) covering six states. STARS Scheme has a national component under which key reforms are shared and disseminated for implementation.