Reimagining Youth Skills Post-Pandemic
World Youth Skills Day 2022 will again take place in a challenging context due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
- UNESCO estimates that schools were either fully or partially closed for more than 30 weeks between March 2020 and May 2021 in half the countries of the world. In late June, 19 countries still had full school closures, affecting nearly 157 million learners. And 768 million more learners were affected by partial school closures.
- Respondents to a survey of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions jointly collected by UNESCO, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank reported that distance training had become the most common way of imparting skills, with considerable difficulties regarding, among others, curricula adaptation, trainee and trainer preparedness, connectivity, or assessment and certification processes.
- ILO estimates show that globally, youth employment fell 8.7 per cent in 2020, compared with 3.7 per cent for adults, with the most pronounced fall seen in middle-income countries. The consequences of this disruption to the early labour market experiences of youth could last for years.
World Youth Skills Day 2021 will pay tribute to the resilience and creativity of youth through the crisis. Participants will take stock of how TVET systems have adapted to the pandemic and recession, think of how those systems can participate in the recovery, and imagine priorities they should adopt for the post-COVID-19-world.
We use this occasion to raise awareness of the work that is being done to promote equality of rights and access in our different countries and share our best practices.
The Learn Abroad to do Better at home for Gender Equality project is funded by Erasmus+ and more information about the project are available here: https://asfar.org.uk/project/learn-abroad-to-do-better-at-home-for-gender-equality/