Employability, Growth and Generation 2021 (EGG-2021)

As part of the ‘Youth in National Building’ Initiatives

Proposed by Suchinta Foundation and in collaboration with
Ministry of Education (MoE) of Government of Bangladesh

Background
Suchinta Foundation is a not-for-profit organization working towards a democratic, developed
and harmonious Bangladesh and working towards youth and community development. Suchinta
Foundation is aligning itself from its onset with Prime Minister’s vision of a middle-income
Bangladesh by 2021. Honorable ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed has been promoting the
importance of youths’ role in nation building and poverty alleviation, which is again another
motto of Suchinta Foundation. Center for Research and Information (CRI), has an initiative
called Young Bangla through which youths identified their desire to be involved and engaged
in poverty alleviation, youth development and nation building efforts for the nation. Suchinta
Foundation became partners of CRI and starts deepening the scope of youth led nation-
building initiatives. Then, Suchinta Foundation held consultations with various ministries and
youths and youth entrepreneurs. From these consultations, emerged the youth-led desire to
engage with the sector of technical and vocational education and eradicate poverty from
Bangladesh gradually.

Contexts
Bangladesh is a country with the population of about 140m and the labor force being about
60m and with more than half of the population is young. The national labor force increases
annually by roughly 2.5 million people most of whom are youth. Although around 3.5 million
youth are entering the legal working age (15 years) only 2.0 million of them join the labor
force as large groups of youth remain in general education and other streams of learning such
as informal apprenticeships. About half of this population, have not been subjected to any
formal education, either at the primary level or lower, and women mostly fall within this
category. Most of the workers in Bangladesh are employed in the informal sector, with
agriculture as the major sector of employment. The informal sector provides some 78 percent
of total employment, of which 48 percent is in agriculture. Overseas employment of poorly
skilled workers has also become a significant source of employment. Skill development
training is still only around 2 percent of enrolment after grade 8. The availability of trained
labor remains a problem in Bangladesh. Additionally, there is a mismatch between available
jobs and required skills. The training content and quality are not valued highly in the market.
Sometimes trained workers remain unemployed or cannot find employment in their area of
training. It indicates mismatch and quality of training.

The Constitution of Bangladesh articulates “The state is responsible for development of

human resources of the country irrespective of gender, and to assist in employment as per
the capabilities of every citizen.” Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is
crucial for the development of human capital of this country. The 6th five year Plan

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Document emphasizes on enhancement of skills through “Improvement of the percentage of
vocational and technical graduates obtaining employment both in the domestic and
international markets”.

As part of its effort to transform Bangladesh into a middle-income country, the

government has set a target to reach 20 percent technical and vocational education by
2021. In 2009, there was only one per cent student in the technical and vocation education,
now there is 8 per cent student, which is not an indicator of complacency but no doubt is a
great success of present government. Many countries have achieved remarkable progress as
they gave importance to expansion of technical and vocation education; nearly 60 per cent
students in many countries are taking technical education.

In Bangladesh along with government run initiatives, a good number of private trade training
schools run by individuals and trust initiatives. The growth of private trade schools is
primarily linked with large-scale export of skilled and unskilled manpower to the Middle East
and other countries. Many of which are required to be conformed gradually to the National
Skills Standards (NSS) requirement. 

Vision
To make Bangladesh happy and prosperous and achieving middle-income status by 2021 and
developed status by 2041 through youth led initiative on livelihood, vocational and technical
education

Goal
Contributing towards the target set by present government to reach 20 percent technical
and vocational students in educational streams by 2021

Main Objective
To reduce poverty and unemployment through augmenting technical and vocational education
and training (TVET) with the support from young volunteers and youth led entrepreneur
organizations so that more youths can be made able to acquire employable skills and thus
generate income through wage-earning jobs or self-employment

Specific Objectives
 Developing a youth led and government-community collaboration model to produce numbers
of basic and skilled workers prepared to be part of the job market locally, nationally and
globally and help in achieving targets of national economic growth underlined in Vision 2021.
 To enhance relevance and access of TVET Programs
 To improve capacity for good quality TVET delivery
 To increase skill training for the poor, women and disadvantaged group

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Main Components:

1. Make basic trade training, and SSC/HSC Voc relevant, efficient and with high

quality, jointly with youth volunteers, youth led community organizations,

and/or young entrepreneurs and TSCs;

2. Make polytechnic students able to acquire quality and appropriate skills for job

market;

3. Incubation for Young Entrepreneurs to develop private public partnership at

Polytechnic Institutions all over the country; and

4. Shared learning for sustainability and future scale up.

Broad Activity Frameworks under Components:

A) Inception activities

a. Development of detail action plan through consultative process with multi-stakeholders

b. Development of manuals for partnership, monitoring, evaluation, management
c. Identification of youth volunteers, organizations and entrepreneurs
d. Building capacity of identified youth implementers (to be continued)
e. Installment of management structure and roll out the modalities
f. Make initial materials for communication

B) Component 1: Make basic trade training, and SSC/HSC Voc relevant, efficient and with
high quality, jointly with youth volunteers, youth led community organizations, and/or young
entrepreneurs and TSCs;

a. Local Community Need assessment at 64 districts and identification of 2 common BT

for all TSCs countrywide and 3 area specific BT for each TSC
b. Supplementary training materials development (for trainer and trainees) for Basic
Trade courses and SSC Voc
c. TOTs involving new non-government youth and TSC instructors
d. Implementation of 5 BTs at TSCs
e. Outreach Training at Union level
f. Provide both apprenticeship and job linkages for BT finishers and SSC Voc and HSC
Voc;
g. Horizontal learning and sharing of success stories;
h. Digitalization and online of the materials, teaching-learning process as continuing;

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 i. Development of sustainability plan with local young entrepreneurs, community
organizations, local government institutions and national level policy makers
j. Campaign and awareness on livelihood education and dignity of work

C) Component 2: Make polytechnic students able to acquire quality and appropriate skills for
job market.

a. Ratification and signing MoUs with Polytechnics (49) (separately) under the framework
of mother MoU
b. Develop a program to facilitate linkages for apprenticeships
c. Develop supplementary education materials for selected diplomas
d. Career Counseling (materials, modules, and dissemination) for students and make them
employable with non-tech preparedness to enter to market
e. Facilitate job placement and follow-up; and forward linkage to overseas
f. Motivation and campaign on technical education

D) Component 3: Incubation for Young Entrepreneurs to develop private public partnership at

polytechnic institutions

a. Partnership with 25 Young Entrepreneurs in Technical and Vocational Education and

Training
b. Engage them with TSC and Polytechnic and find spaces for them within polytechnic
c. Collaboration between public and private and learning by doing
d. Business plan development for future MPO supported skills training providers with a
performance based funding model

E) Component 4: Shared learning for sustainability and future scale up

Timeline
3 Years

Implementation Approaches
This program will be stretched towards the disadvantaged and poor segments of the
population with effective programs in imparting in sellable skills, and impact of the training
programs on increasing employment opportunities and raising income of the poor and lower
middle class. This initiative aims to strengthen the role of both public and private sector skill
training through expansion and modernization of VTE to meet market demands and extend
greater benefits to the poor and women and particularly with the engagement of youth.

Given the current low participation rates of women in skills development, special efforts are
necessary to correct this gender imbalance. 30% enrollment rate for females across all skills
development program under this initiative will be aimed.

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This project will target to increase the opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs)
through increasing their access and participation in skills development programs. To achieve
this, a strategy to increase the participation of persons with disabilities in skills development
program will be integrated with customized curriculum and delivery methods for PWDs in
agreed occupations and skill sets. A target of 10% of enrolments for PWDs across all skill
development programs may be fixed.

The access and participation of working children to skills development should be improved.
Informal courses should be specifically designed to cater for the needs of working children
to gain meaningful employment under the sub activity like ‘outreach’ programs of TSCs.

Strategies to improve access for groups under-represented in both formal and informal skills
training will be implemented to reduce the poverty. Community based training for rural
economic empowerment should be incorporated with specifically designed ideas to increase
employment opportunities for under privileged groups in their locality.

Accurate assessment of the demand for different categories of skilled workers in different
overseas markets and improvement of skills training for overseas employment will be
integrated.

Commitment is needed to support to improve partnerships on PPP basis between industry and
both public and private training organizations so the quality of skills development is improved.

In order to meet labor demands in Bangladesh, this initiative will deliver quality skills that
employers want, and these needs are constantly changing. Through improving the
responsiveness and flexibility of TVET institutions under MoE, reform will enable institutions
to better meet industry needs. Agricultural technology will get more priority.

Expected Outcomes
 Enhancing individuals’ employability (wage/ self employment) and ability to adapt to
changing technologies and labor market demands;
 To provide 40% of Counseling and Guidance services to youths on psychosocial and
economic issues
 Providing better quality courses with credentials recognized nationally and
internationally
 More demand-driven rather than supply-driven training and education made
 Improved the link between training and job markets.
 Improved the positive effect on poverty reduction by targeting new clientele
 Improved efficiency and quality of programs

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Impact
 To reduce the problem of unemployment by 10% of the youths in catchments
 Improving the productivity and profitability of business enterprises locally and
nationally
 Strengthening national competitiveness and reducing poverty;
 Improving the quality and relevance of skills development in Bangladesh;
 Enabling more effective planning, coordination and monitoring of skill development by
MoE

Modalities/partnership/arrangement (actor)