Giving Compass' Take:

• Studies show that the future workforce will require young people to develop employability skills, such as communication, digital literacy, and problem solving to be successful. India's current education system does not yet provide focused training for young people to develop these skill sets.

• How can education systems calibrate their training and curriculum to match the skills necessary for future employment? How can donors boost programs that will help?

• Read about this new assessment that can help assess students' soft skills.

India has a literacy rate of 74.04 percent (2011 Census). Literacy rate is defined as “percentage of the population of an area at a particular time aged seven years or above, who can read and write with understanding”. But being literate is not equal to being employable. There is no census for the employability of young people.

Today’s fast changing economy is predominantly steered by technology, digitisation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and platform-led business models, and so predicting which skills will be relevant in the next 5-10 years is no mean feat.

India’s education system has not evolved at the same pace as industry. Many students completing the eighth standard are unprepared for higher studies or the labour market, as they lack basic cognitive skills such as reading and math.

Empirical evidence from various studies suggests that certain competencies such as communication, English, digital literacy, arithmetic, financial literacy, problem solving, and life skills—together defined as ‘core employability skills’or ‘future skills’—are essential to prepare our youth for the future. These skills are domain-agnostic, universally applicable and transferable, and hold the key to creating impact at scale and with speed.

Core employability skills are easily adaptable in the three key sectors of our economy—agriculture and allied, industry, and service. The quality of their delivery is key, and requires intervention at four levels: quality trainers, market-aligned curriculum, assessment of learning outcomes, and effective matchmaking between youth and jobs. They should also capture young people’s aspirations, not just their competencies.

Dr. Reddy’s Foundation has a new delivery model, ‘GROW’, which is a short duration, placement-linked skilling programme that primarily focuses on core employability skills. It offers a combination of essentials–digital literacy, communication, arithmetic—supported by practical components such as interview skills.

Read the full article about employability training skills in India by Devanshi Vaid at India Development Review (IDR).