We in this country specialise in putting the cart before the horse. So we set up commissions to fix higher education while the primary and tertiary levels of education are still in shambles. Other countries think ahead about the needs of skilled labour force to run their economy and industry, and plan their education policies accordingly. We wait for failures to teach us the right lessons.
Thus, what we have is a huge section of population going into graduate and postgraduate studies in disciplines that have no job market whatsoever. On the contrary, we failed to develop enough technical and vocational institutes to train our workforce.
Consequently, we have untrained or semi-skilled people in fields that require expertise of another level. Majority of them are working in the informal sector. Obviously, in a country that has been unable to conduct a credible census in almost twenty years, it is difficult to imagine correct estimation of labour force or labour force growth rate or the unemployment rate. All we know is that the government is training about a 100,000 people at present.
On a positive note, the government has recently launched the first ever National Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy document as well as a National Vocational Qualifications Framework (NVQF). As per these, the government is planning to enhance the traning volume to 500,000 people. There are serious capacity and quality issues. The syllabi are old and dated.
As in most areas, the education and training programme is being funded and implemented by another country. Then there is the private sector to assist the public sector and the policy takes that (Public-Private Partnership) into account as well.
The good thing is that the structure is there. The trained workers will be sent abroad because the country needs remittances from overseas Pakistanis. Now the provinces can implement their provincial vocational training institutes.
We hope that in the coming months and years, Pakistan achieve a lot in terms of teaching its people skills that matter.