The ‘Future of Work’ as a policy concept has received much attention in the last few years. Rapid developments in emergent technologies like artificial intelligence, internet of things, automation, and robotics, have fuelled debate and action from policymakers, educators, and businesses to fully leverage the opportunities these new technologies present. The equal amounts of anxiety and excitement that this debate has presented uptill now, needs urgent revisiting in the context of the ongoing pandemic induced economic changes.
Continue reading “The Platform Economy and the Pandemic: What We Need to Look Out For”What Should The Covid-19 Pandemic Change?
Ideally, our discriminatory and unsustainable systems.
Unprecedented — A word used to emphasize or describe something that hasn’t happened earlier, at least in our living memories. How we respond to Covid-19, beyond taming the virus in the short term, only time will tell; but there is no doubt that these are unprecedented times for all of us. Never before has the world found itself in exactly the same situation across continents, time zones, political systems, religious affiliations and economic status. This is not to say that everyone’s affected the same way — while we keep hearing that the novel coronavirus “doesn’t discriminate”, more evidence suggests this ongoing pandemic is exacting a higher toll on marginalized communities, the old, the sick and those with lower incomes.
Continue reading “What Should The Covid-19 Pandemic Change?”Gender and Self-learning: Autonomy for the Vulnerable During Crisis
Because making a choice is always a political decision. And when systems do not allow for that to happen, no amount of agency building exercise will be fruitful.
Our programs and processes have been built upon the vision of enabling self-learners.
Self-learning is a process by which the learner takes charge of her learning journey. This manifests in the form of choosing what to learn, when to learn, from whom, how, and to what extent. While the self in self-learning may sound like everything is dependent on the individual, it is not a lonely activity. The emphasis on self emerges from the need for placing the agency of choice-making in the hands of the learner as opposed to a system or an institution determining the best pathway for an individual to achieve their goals.
Continue reading “Gender and Self-learning: Autonomy for the Vulnerable During Crisis”What It Takes To Prevent and Reduce School Dropouts: Insights From Our Landscape Research
Urged by global commitments under the MDGs and the Education for All goals that India pledged to at the World Education Forum (Dakar 2000), the parliament of India passed the Right to Education (RTE) act in 2009. The RTE went further than the reforms formerly introduced under the National Policy on Education (1986) to make education a right for each and every child in the age group of 6-14 years.
Continue reading “What It Takes To Prevent and Reduce School Dropouts: Insights From Our Landscape Research”How to prepare young people for the future of work and lifelong learning
“With little idea about the jobs of the future, the key responsibility of the education system is to equip young people with the skills needed to manoeuvre this ever-changing landscape.”
With the future of work and learning having been the key focus at Quest2Learn Summit 2019, Dr Anantha Duraiappah – Director of the UNESCO MGIEP – helped map the landscape of education to make sense of the opportunities that lie in lifelong learning.
Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt from his keynote speech at the Summit:
‘Leaving no one behind’ has been at the center of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with its emphasis on equitable and inclusive education. Anchoring his keynote speech at Quest2Learn Summit 2019 around this theme, Dr Anantha Duraiappah – Director of the UNESCO MGIEP – spoke about the problems plaguing the education sector and the structural changes needed to promote equity and inclusion.
Dr Duraiappah opens with some startling facts that shed light on the level of extremism and intolerance prevalent among the youth in India and the sense of anxiety and depression common among this subset of the population today.
Continue reading “How to prepare young people for the future of work and lifelong learning”How can we make women ITIs future-ready?
As a step towards bringing more women to the workforce, Quest Alliance – in partnership with JP Morgan – hosted a round table on ‘Driving Holistic Reform in the Women ITI Ecosystem in India’.
With the aim of bridging the gender gap in India’s workforce, the multi-stakeholder participation led to several important solution strategies.
Women’s participation in the workforce continues to decline across the world. The situation is particularly stark in India, some of the reasons for which are expounded here.
While the battle to fight social norms keeping women away from the workforce will be a protracted one, an urgent step towards bridging the gender gap in India’s workforce was taken in the form of a round table on ‘Driving Holistic Reform in the Women ITI Ecosystem in India’.
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