One of the more less-obvious ways that our economy keeps having its potential unfulfilled is by the lack of any investment in vocational education in Bangladesh. Our nation is in dire need of workers with vocational skills, such as nurses, electricians, plumbers and IT technicians, and any investment in these types of skills has the potential to accelerate our development to a great degree.
By investing in vocational education, we can fill a lot of the gaps that exist within our workforce and improve the overall quality of human resources available and the effects are wide ranging as well.
Bangladesh already exports a large portion of our unskilled workforce overseas, primarily in Gulf states, by investing in vocational education we also stand to up the skills of our overseas workforce which stands to greatly increase our overall foreign remittance. And that also means that a better educated worker can protect themselves from the kind of abuse that our worker destinations usually have in store for them.
While the necessity to focus and invest on vocational education has been discussed both by our polity and our civil society, it would require a comprehensive rethinking of our education system to be achieved.
To that end, it is always a matter of great disappointment that, during each yearly budget, the amounts allocated to the education sector always seems to fall short of the mark.
Achieving full and effective employment for all will be nothing but a pipe dream if the administration keeps skirting the issue of investing in education to a degree that would actually help.
The government must prioritize vocational training in Bangladesh’s overall education strategy if it wishes to realize the country’s middle income aspirations anytime soon.
