That schools do not prepare our young people well for the world of work is a frequent refrain. Graduate unemployment rate is reported to be three times higher, at 13.5 percent (in 2024), than the overall rate of unemployment. Youth unemployment (age 15-29 years) is about 10 percent, more than double the overall unemployment rate at under five percent. More alarming is that about 30 percent of youth are categorised as not in education, employment, or training (NEET). Are we pushing almost a third of youth into vulnerability to crime, drugs or depression?
Jobless economic growth is much more an economic policy problem than an education and training problem. About a dozen major projects on skill development and employment creation have been undertaken in Bangladesh in the last two decades. Their catchy titles suggest the variety of objectives they were expected to serve.
Skills for Employment Investment Program (SEIP) launched with Asian Development Bank support (2014-23) aimed to train youth in high-demand skills implemented through Palli Karma Shahayak Foundation (PKSF). Some 60,000 youth were trained in these courses per year, and it is reported that about 60 percent found jobs or became self-employed. Accelerating and Strengthening Skills for Economic Transformation (ASSET, 2021-26), funded by the World Bank, was designed to “equip future-ready youth with skills suited for the 4th Industrial Revolution”, working with several ministries. In the Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP; 2010-19), the World Bank assisted the Ministry of Education to modernise polytechnics and promote public-private collaboration. The Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Reform project (2008-15), implemented with the International Labour Organization and European Union, helped prepare the National Technical and Vocational Qualifications Framework (NTVQF), meant to serve as a quality assurance standard in all skill training.
In the informal economy, as a successor to SEIP, the Recovery and Advancement of Informal Sector Employment (RAISE), supported by the World Bank, is being implemented by PKSF to help would-be young micro entrepreneurs with training and capital support.
These and several other projects have expanded training opportunities and contributed to building the institutional support structure. Yet, complaints of mismatch and volume of graduate unemployment have not abated. Rough estimates based on Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data indicate that 22 lakh youth enter the job market every year, but any kind of new jobs available are only about 14 lakh, leaving more than a third of new job-seekers unemployed. So, what has gone wrong?
Sociologist Philip Foster, six decades ago, wrote a seminal piece on what he called the vocational school fallacy. He critiqued the insertion of vocational courses in primary and secondary schools as an easy answer to youth unemployment. He argued that basic general education has the critical task of equipping young people with the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy and helping them cultivate the thinking, reasoning, and values necessary to function as adults in work and life. Primary and secondary schools, especially in low-income countries, have a tough enough job teaching the foundational skills and should not have the added burden of vocational training. Experience of vocationalising general secondary schools has been almost entirely negative. This evidence led the World Bank to shift its assistance to specialised vocational institutions since the 1980s. Foster’s conclusion is even more pertinent today because the nature of jobs now changes rapidly, and workers need to be prepared to relearn and upgrade their skills.
Dani Rodrik and Rohan Sandhu at Harvard Kennedy School, based on a meta-analysis of skills and jobs linkages in developing economies, point to a difficult policy pathway for low-income countries. They conclude that the future of employment in developing countries lies mostly in services, even though industrialisation has been the historical road to growth and prosperity. Heavy capital and increasingly higher skill demands in manufacturing in today’s economies make job creation and relevant skills development difficult for low-income countries. The service sector’s contribution to GDP is rising and will keep rising. Enhancing productivity in labour-absorbing services, therefore, has to be a priority for both employment growth and equity. The dilemma is that good models have not emerged about how to raise productivity in labour-absorbing services.
Rodrik and Sandhu suggest a combination of four strategies for developing economies. The first focus may be on incentivising existing large, relatively productive firms to expand their employment, either directly or through supply chains. The second strategy would be to enhance the productive capabilities of small enterprises through specific public inputs. These could be management training, loans and grants, customised worker skills, and technology assistance. The third approach may be to provide digital tools or other new technologies directly to workers or to firms that complement low-skill labour. Thus, less educated workers can do some of the tasks now performed by more skilled workers. The fourth strategy, also about less-educated workers, would combine vocational training with “wrap-around” services, a range of additional assistance programmes for job seekers to enhance their employability, retention, and promotion. It would emphasise training support for job-seekers working closely with employers, helping both to understand each other and to reshape the latter’s human-resource practices.
Various government initiatives appear to reflect elements of the multi-pronged strategies proposed by Rodrik and others. However, the devil is in the details. The strategies to produce the results have to be contextualised. A few observations deserve serious attention from decision-makers. First, mandatory vocational and technical courses in upper primary and secondary schools risk falling into the trap of vocational school fallacy; schools should concentrate on foundational general skills.
Second, school curriculum renewal and rewriting remind us of the curriculum reform campaign of 2020-22, which backfired. A critical look at the curriculum is essential, focusing on how it is used in the classroom, how teachers, students and schools are supported to achieve learning outcomes, and on student assessment that supports learning. Third, National University needs to move away from the 4-year model, allowing flexible entry and exit through short certificate courses, 1-2-year diplomas, and 3-year degrees like the community college models in the US, Canada and Australia.
Fourth, various digital technology and skill development initiatives in schools have not paid off to the extent expected. A tab for each teacher and a digital hub for young people cannot work in isolation; connectivity, device support, relevant software, and learner-friendly interactive portals have to be ensured. Fifth, with over 80 percent of jobs in the low-skill informal economy, NGOs and private trainers are vital bridges to employment. However, the current system of treating these organisations as standard government vendors breeds corruption and inefficiency. To fix this, government bodies like the Bureau of Non-Formal Education and PKSF must abandon transactional contracts and instead build genuine, collaborative partnerships with proven NGOs and industry associations.
Sixth, dominance of projects funded by external loans led to a focus on disbursement and fund utilisation, with Ministry of Finance oversight limiting the involvement of key TVET bodies. A comprehensive and coordinated approach is needed for moving beyond temporary projects to a sustainable strategy.
International lessons and Bangladesh’s own experience suggest that government policy and strategy need to create the conditions for non-state stakeholders, including the industries, private and NGO skills training providers, and communities, to be partners with a genuine stake in the programmes.
Dr Manzoor Ahmed is professor emeritus at BRAC University. He was the convener of the consultation committee on primary and non-formal education appointed by the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, as well as of the consultation committee on secondary education appointed by the Ministry of Education.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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