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 The OECD is not spared Roy’s frustration: “The OECD’s attitude towards education is outdated.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

Education does not equal skills

by Julie Harris
Consultant, OECD Department of Education

Mapping skills at the European Youth Forum

I went back 25 years in time yesterday, as I sat with participants at the European Youth Forum, all young, vibrant, educated and driven. I felt as if I were at university with my daughter and 100 of her friends. We discussed the future, skills, and in particular, the skills mismatch, described by Andreas Schleicher as “a lot of unemployed graduates plus a lot of employers looking for skilled workers”.

At the eve of my own career 25 years ago, my current profession did not exist. The Internet did not exist. There were fewer graduates and fewer employers looking for skilled employees. Did we worry about getting jobs? Probably, but back then a degree was the passkey.

Today, as my daughter graduates from college in 2013, the debate for her as well as for the 120 participants we worked with today, centred around jobs, skills and education. Just what is the link? Does a degree guarantee a job? Less and less so. Does work experience play a role? Yes, but the youth in my breakout group felt that unpaid internships amounted to exploitation and rarely provided the learning originally intended. What about the “soft” skills that so many students report are not developed in traditional school settings: clear communication skills, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, collaboration, curiosity, critical thinking and technological skills? How do individuals best acquire these skills – which mean more to long-term professional success than purely occupational skills do – and what do we need to do as a society to develop, value and encourage such skill development?

As Andreas Schleicher pointed out in his introduction to yesterday’s session, we need to build strong generic skills (skills that cross contexts, such as reading, writing, problem-solving, communication and collaboration), better utilise talent pools and skill for future jobs.

So how do we go about that?

Some of the ideas participants in the session came up with were:

1. Link studies to labour market demand. Should governments regulate entry into study programmes, for example when there is a skills surplus and a jobs deficit?
2. Improve career counselling to students and involve parents. Help students and parents know what the jobs of the future will be, where some of the shortages may lie and what skills will best help them succeed.
3. Provide internships/work experience opportunities on a parallel track along with university studies (as in the United States and France).
4. Put more professional, practical skills training into university education. 
5. Encourage entrepreneurship and innovation among youth: communicate that small-business owners are important actors in society and that there is room for thinking outside the box, across disciplines and beyond borders.
6. Build skills locally (rather than outsourcing to cheaper providers).
7. Keep in mind that skills mismatch can begin at school – tracking can lead to rigidity and close down broader skills development. 

In sum, and as one participant put it, skills is a complex issue. It is more than the ability to “do something” and bigger, much bigger than education alone. Education, both formal and informal, at school and in the workplace, gleaned young and old, is a vital piece of the skills puzzle, but education alone does not skills make.

Learn more:
European Youth Forum: Youth Employment: A Call for Change
OECD Skills Strategy
Participate in the 2012 OECD Global Youth Video Competition