The British Council organised a two-day conference here in London titled, “The Quest for Excellence; The Skills Revolution in the UK and South Asia” that culminated today. The British Council in collaboration with the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) hosted the Social Asia Policy Dialogue on Skills, which ran the whole gamut from defining skills to making sure a policy is formulated to unlock potential in the region especially with the emergence of the demographic dividend in the region.
Speakers and participants from all over South Asia and the UK, numbering up to around 150, were invited in the two-day conference to share their insights and devise policies and recommendations for the British Council to ensure that the region not only embraces the potential of vocational training, but works towards optimising the potential for the benefit of the South Asian economies.
The British speakers tended to focus on sharing their insights extracted from UK’s own experience with regards to skill, which according to British Council, CEO, Martin Davidson, moves “from a state led approach to one that balances the public and private sector with
an emphasis on employer ownership of programmes”.
Discussions over the past couple of days included topics such as A Global Skills Marketplace: Challenges and Opportunities; Key Trends in South Asia; Youth Unemployment and Skills Mismatches; Skills Standards; Reaping the Demographic Dividend; Engaging Industry in Skills Development; Skills for Economic Growth, Prosperity and Social Inclusion; Moving to a Demand Led Skills System; Lifelong Learning – Meeting the Demand; Knowledge Economy or Know-How Economy and From Bricks to Online Click. Each of the topics was thoroughly dissected by knowledgeable speakers and I’d be sharing the data and the insights gathered from the discussions in this space in the near future as well, since the issue is especially relevant to the current situation in Pakistan.
One of the reports shared during the conference was a custom research report for the British Council by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This report titled, “Skills development in South Asia: Trends in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka” would be focused upon especially in this space, since it provides a detailed analysis with regards to developing skills in the region and how things might pan out in the next couple of decades as well.
It is very important for Pakistan – and South Asia in general – to figure out a way to make its ever increasing labour force employable in the future. And for that the perceptions and the mindset with regards to vocational training needs to change prodigiously. It was pointed out that we have to focus on making sure that we make our future generations well equipped to deal with jobs and vacancies that haven’t been created as yet. And the best way to do that is to bolster the potential that hasn’t been tapped as things stand, and make the work force as versatile and adaptable as possible, so that they can face the challenges that lie in the wait.
More on all of this to come…
The writer is Business Correspondent, Pakistan Today. Email: khulduneshahid@gmail.com; Twitter: @khuldune