The two-day “Regional Conference on Education, Training and the Knowledge Economy in South Asia” was held on September 14-15, 2006 at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, India.
The conference served as a platform for knowledge sharing and policy dialogue with the leading stakeholders in the region from five countries in the South Asia Region – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Its objectives were to:
- Better understand the skill implications of globalization and the Knowledge Economy
- Share the findings of the World Bank’s Economic Sector Work in the region and good practice international experience
- Address the many debates about how best to reform education and training systems
- Catalyze countries in South Asia to come up with integrated cross-cutting strategies for addressing the challenges of globalization and the knowledge economy.
Globalization and the knowledge economy pose numerous challenges as well as opportunities for developing countries, including those in South Asia. Expanding trade and globalization of production and foreign capital make continuous learning over the work-life an imperative, as skills acquired in schools and in the workplace become obsolete more quickly and new and more complex skills are needed to respond to accelerating technological change. Global flows of goods, services and know-how also create pressures for economies to restructure, as some industries decline and new opportunities arise in others; these forces, in turn, create demand for re-skilling of those made redundant and for skills-upgrading and training in new skills for others employed in new industries. How educational and training systems respond to these challenges will have far reaching implications for economic growth and competitiveness of South Asian countries, and for income growth, employment, job creation, and poverty reduction.
Policymakers in the region are grappling with these challenges and are engaged in a policy dialogue with the World Bank to address some of these issues, including those involving reforms of their education and training systems. There is also a broader debate going on in many countries in the region, on vocationalizing secondary education to better prepare school graduates for the new skill challenges of the workplace and, given the magnitude of demands on the public education and training systems, on a greater private sector role in education and training provision. The World Bank is helping South Asian governments address these challenges, drawing on Economic Sector Work on education, training, labor markets, and private sector development, and on international experiences and lessons on similar issues in other regions of the world.
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RSS