The government plans to introduce job-oriented education method in order to enrich the sector of skilled human resources. It will create a huge employment opportunities at home and abroad, education ministry sources said.
And this job-oriented teaching-learning system can be the vital means of lessening the mounting pressure of unemployed population, experts say.
They also said the job-oriented education system would ensure quality of education to make students worthy citizens.
“Skilled human resources are very important for hastening the country's productivity that can take the nation forward,” an expert said.
Considering this, the government is focusing on technical education in order to create skilled youths to face future challenges.
In this regard, Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni recently said that the government is working for developing skilled youths to face future challenges and build a modern Bangladesh.
“We want to take maximum advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The national and international labor market is changing rapidly as a result of 4IR. We have to transform our huge population into human resources by combining technology and skills as per the demand. The government is working to achieve this goal,” the minister said.
Dr Dipu Moni came up with the assertion while speaking as the chief guest at a virtual meeting to mark the World Youth Skills Day 2020 organised by Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on Wednesday.
“A huge number of Honors and Master's degree holders are now jobless because they do not have any technical knowledge," she said.
Terming the technical education as the backbone of development, she said, “There is no alternative to technical education to make Bangladesh a better state.”
The education minister also said the government has put emphasis on technical education as it does not want to produce any educated jobless people anymore.
“At the same time, the National Technical and Vocational Qualification Framework has been framed that include increasing employment opportunities by connecting with the industry, forecasting the labor market through data collection from national and international labor market, modernizing the curriculum, improving the quality of trainers and training institutes, and forming industry skill councils,” she added.
About the increasing number of educated unemployed, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Center for Policy Dialogue's (CPD) Distinguished Fellow, said, “About 5 to 15 lakh educated graduates are being added to the existing labor market every year. Apart from emphasizing technical education, government have to increase the investment opportunity in the country to recruit this huge number of educated unemployed.”
He said, “Bangladesh has become the top in the list of countries that saw the quickest growth in the number of ultra-wealthy people. In a country where citizens do not invest, thousands of crore money are smuggled into Swiss banks, foreign investment can't be expected.”
“The government has to take proper steps to bring back these people to invest these money in the country. Then, huge opportunity of jobs will be created and thousands of unemployed youths will get jobs,” he added.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the unemployment rate in Bangladesh is 4.37 percent, which is equivalent to USA’s.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) noted the rising unemployment rate among the relatively more educated labour force. About 46 percent of the total unemployed youths are university graduates.
Dr Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of World Bank’s Dhaka office, said, “This is a structural mismatch. When we talk to relatives, they say there are not enough jobs. But when we talk to entrepreneurs, they say they do not get qualified people to hire. It shows that the quality of education in the existing system doesn’t match the needs of the current job market.”