Bhubaneswar: India needs to map future skills to make students job ready, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Tuesday, ahead of the G-20 education working group meeting in Bhubaneswar.
Participants will look at new skills at the meeting themed “Future of Work”. Discussions are expected to go on till 28 April.
“The future of jobs is going to be very different from what it is right now and we need to map the skills to make students job ready,” Pradhan said Tuesday, after a meeting between delegates of India and Singapore. The meeting was attended by officials of both the ministries of education and skill development and entrepreneurship.
India discussed best practices in skills and education — particularly about Singapore’s initiatives to include skills in its school education curriculum. It is learning to imbibe them in the Indian context, Pradhan said, adding that India has educational technology to offer in return.
Officials also said Singapore has done very well in lifelong learning and skill upgradation.
Though no Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with Singapore yet, officials said that possibility could not be ignored in future.
“We want to learn how Singapore is doing reskilling and up-skilling and want to implement it in our country. Now that under the National Education Policy 2020, skill can be introduced from class 6 onwards, we want to see how we can strengthen this strategy,” Secretary School Education Sanjay Kumar said.
The discussions are crucial in the light of the National Curriculum Framework that the ministries of education and skill development and entrepreneurship released earlier this month. It talks about letting students drop out of school after Class 10 and enroll for a skill-based course.
The next meeting of the G-20 will be themed after foundational literacy and numeracy and will be held in June in Pune.
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