Skills revolution will come from the grassroots

Sanjit Bunker Roy figured out pretty early on that it does, indeed, take a village; in fact, it takes a village to keep a village. He founded the Barefoot College in India in 1972 on the premise that for any rural development activity to be successful and sustainable, it must be both based in the village and managed and owned by those whom it serves. The College, a non-governmental organisation, serves rural men and women of all ages, all of whom are barely literate (if at all) and have no hope of getting even the lowest government job, by providing training in such skills as solar engineering, water drilling, hand-pump engineering, masonry, architecture, and computing.

Marilyn Achiron, Editor of the Education Department caught up with Roy when he was in Paris to speak at the OECD Forum. He’s not one to mince his words:

“We are facing a disaster of monumental proportions,” says Roy. “We’re training people to leave the village, not to stay in the village. We’re encouraging migration at a colossal level from village to city. As a result, we’re losing all the traditional knowledge and skills that used to be in the village. Does anyone at the mover-and-shaker level have the courage and vision to turn this around? We’re already set in a pattern that we can’t break.”

According to Roy, whom Time magazine named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010, the big international donors are part of the problem, and not enough of the solution. “People aren’t listening enough. The biggest problem with the big donors is that they don’t have the ability or the humility to listen to what’s happening on the ground. We need to respect traditional knowledge and skills; you cannot be educated at the expense of tradition. It’s a balance. There’s a real urgent situation out there and we’re not treating it with urgency.”

A dissatisfaction with policies designed in the relative comfort of developed-world capitals while more than one in five people in the world live on less than USD 1.25 a day comes across clearly. The OECD is not spared Roy’s frustration: “The OECD’s attitude towards education is outdated. In the non-organised, informal world, people have no access to water, electricity, formal education. The OECD’s attitude is dangerous. They have to revisit it and adapt it to the reality on the ground. They have lost touch.” Even the OECD Skills Strategy, released earlier this week already needs updating:  “There will be a skills revolution from the grassroots. The current thinking has to change. The question is: How do you recognise skills that people already have and apply them in the situation in which they live? The OECD is very backwards in its thinking.”

Between 2007 and 2011, the Barefoot College trained some 300 grandmothers, from 29 countries throughout Africa, in solar technologies. After their six-month training course—paid for, along with their air fare, by the Indian government—they went back to their villages and solar electrified some 15,000 houses. Says Roy, “These illiterate grandmothers know more about the repair and maintenance of solar lamps and installations than any graduate of any five-year university anywhere in the world. And if anyone wants to challenge me on it, I’d be delighted.”

Links:
Barefoot College
Watch the TED Talk: Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement
OECD Skills Strategy
Visit our interactive portal on skills: http://skills.oecd.org
OECD Forum 2012
Photo credit: Colourful feet / Shutterstock

17 top OECD tweeters to follow on education

by Cassandra Davis and Julie Harris
Communications, Directorate for Education

Like us, you are looking for the best and latest information on education when you trawl blogs and twitter streams, Google search results and RSS feeds from news sites. You're seeking quality content, timely content, new research and answers to age-old questions. Years ago, we ploughed through papers found in online libraries, on websites and links sent by colleagues. Today, we have a number of new, well-informed sources at our fingertips (on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and even Pinterest). Some see these as contributing to information overload. Others have learned to use them as powerful filters.

Some of the most reliable filters are knowledgeable people who care enough to share. So who are the "filters" and sources tweeting here at the OECD on education? Take a look below, follow a few, and let us know who we should be following in the comments below. Together, we will learn, share and tweet the very best in education information from across the world.

@OECD: Our main twitter channel for OECD communications on better policies for better lives.

@OECD_EDU: Bringing you all the latest news on OECD work on education proving information to improve the quality of education world wide.

@YLeterme: Yves Leterme is Deputy Secretary-General of the OECD and tweets on social affairs, education, governance and entrepreneurship.

@SchleicherEDU: Andreas Schleicher advises the OECD Secretary General on education policy and is Deputy Director for Education. He tweets on #OECDskills that matter and how to turn them into better jobs and better lives.

@DebRoseveare: Deborah Roseveare heads the Skills Beyond School Division tweeting on all aspects of #OECDSkills:  the development, utilisation and measurement of skills for youth and adults, and building skills through more effective vocational education and training and higher education.

@RichardJYelland: Richard Yelland heads the Policy Advice and Implementation Division and tweets on education policy across all sectors.

@VanDammeEDU: Dirk Van Damme heads the OECD Education Directorate’s Innovation and Measuring Progress Division and the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation #OECDCERI. He tweets on all educational issues and more specifically on the topics of measuring progress, research, indicators and innovation.

@jhwordsmith:  Julie Harris is a social media consultant to the OECD Directorate for Education. She is passionate about learning, skills for the 21st century, technology and education reform. She tweets on these topics and more.

@Kristen_TALIS: Kristen Weatherby is a former classroom teacher, she is the tweet lead for OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey, tweeting on issues that affect teachers.

@AlastairBlyth: Alastair Blyth is a former practicing architect and tweets on design, procurement, and use of school & higher education buildings #OECDCELE

@Valafon: Valerie Lafon is the lead for #OECDIMHE the Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE).

@FabriceHENARD: Fabrice is an analyst tweeting on  Higher Education issues including quality teaching, learning outcomes-AHELO, Internationalisation for #OECDIMHE in English and French.

@OECDLive: OECD’s Livestream tweeting our conferences and events in real time.  Tune in for the launch of the #OECDSkills Strategy during #OECDweek on 22-24 May.

Last but not least:
@OECDBerlin; @ocdeenespanol ;@OCDE_Français; @OECDTokyo: the official OECD twitter channels retweeting our news in German, Spanish, French and Japanese.


Photo credit: Julien Tromeur / © Shutterstock