Skills

·       “Skills are learned abilities that help an individual be successful in living a productive and satisfying life.”

   What are the various kinds of skills

o   Life Skills

o   Functional Skills

o   Vocational Skills

LIFE SKILLS

Life skill education aims to provide students with strategies to make healthy choices that contribute to a meaningful life. Life skills are the abilities that help to promote mental well being and competence in young people as they face the realities of life. It helps the young people to take positive actions to protect themselves and to promote health and meaningful social relationship. Life skills facilitate a complete and integrated development of individuals to function effectively as social beings.

"Life Skills are living skills or abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with demands and challenges of everyday life" (WHO).

The following are the ten generic skills. They are five pairs of related skills.

o   Critical Thinking: It is the ability to analyze information and experience in an objective manner.

o   Creative Thinking: It is an ability that helps us look beyond our direct experience and address issues in a perspective which is different from the obvious or the norm. It adds novelty and flexibility to the situation of our daily life. It contributes to problem solving and decision making by enabling us to explore available alternatives and various consequences of our actions or non-actions.

o    Decision-Making: The process of making assessment of an issue by considering all possible/available options and the effects different decision might have on them.

o   Problem Solving: Having made decisions about each of the options, choosing the one which is the best suited, following it through the process again till a positive outcome of the problem is achieved.

o    Interpersonal Relationship: It is a skill that helps us to understand our relations with others and relate in a positive/reciprocal manner with them. It helps us to maintain relationship with friends and family members and also be able to end relationships constructively.

o   Effective Communication: It is an ability to express ourselves both verbally and non-verbally in an appropriate manner. This means being able to express desires, opinions, and fears and seek assistance and advice in times of need.

o   Coping with Emotions: It is an ability, which involves recognizing emotions in others, and ourselves, being aware of how emotions influence behaviours and being able to respond to emotions appropriately.

o   Coping with Stress: It is an ability to recognize the source of stress in our lives, its effect on us and acting in ways that help to control our levels of stress. This may involve taking action to reduce some stress for example changes in physical environment, life styles, learning to relax etc.

o   Self-Awareness: Includes our recognition of ourselves, our character, strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. It is a pre-requisite for effective communication, interpersonal relationship and developing empathy.

o   Empathy: Is an ability to imagine what life is like for another person even in a situation that we may not be familiar with. It helps us to understand and accept others and their behaviour that may be very different from ourselves.

Life Skills develop over the years continuously in an active manner. There are many skills, which are needed to successfully negotiate each and every interaction.

Skill based approach in life skill education follows well established mentoring techniques to develop student’s innate quality and also motivating them to adopt socially acceptable pattern of life styles by identifying their talents and directing them to choose appropriate steps to enhance their skill and abilities as a part of development. Through the experiential learning process, youth internalize the knowledge and gain the ability to apply the skills appropriately.

FUNCTIONAL SKILLS

We all need a range of skills to succeed in our jobs and in our lives. Functional skills are the practical skills such as language skills ( English), information and communication technology (ICT) and mathematics that allow people to work confidently, effectively and independently in life.

Functional skills such as communication, vocation, personal grooming, laundry, dining, meal preparation, housekeeping, leisure activities, anger management, social etiquette, money management, and responsible citizenship are abilities and everyday routines that every human being should be able to take care of and exercise for their own livelihood and health, as well as his or her purpose and place in society. All students need to be able to function in the home, workplace, and society according to what is expected for individual, physical, social, and financial matters. With functional skill competence, individuals increase their employability opportunities, since their productivity and independence increases.

Learning functional skills is extremely useful in enhancing an individual’s ability to perform her or his job. Considering all of these future benefits, developing the necessary proficiencies to live, survive, and prosper with their creative abilities is what youngsters need to learn.

VOCATIONAL SKILLS

‘Vocational education can be broadly defined as a training program, which prepares an individual for a specific career or occupation’. The key objective of vocational education is to help develop individuals’ skills in very specific fields by giving them applied or concrete experience in specific vocations or trades. This not only makes them employable but also helps create opportunities for entrepreneurship.

The number of students in the age bracket of 5 years to 24 years will be 486 million by 2025, exceeding the combined target population in China (354 million) and US (91 million).

The huge drop-out rate in schools is largely due to reasons ranging from accessibility to affordable education to low perceived short-term benefits, to household circumstances that demand immediate employment for the students.

Driven by the urgency to start earning at a young age due to poverty; and other circumstances like lack of interest in education, most Indians youngsters resort to acquiring employability skills informally in a trade; which would provide livelihood… a path to feed themselves and support their families. Most of the times employers take advantage of this helpless situation of the youngster being unskilled and pay them very low wages, which has resulted in a huge shortage of a skilled workforce in India (they are employed even before they acquire a skill) Apart from that they tend to look out for opportunities abroad once they pick up the skills on job.

Eg.. In the construction industry the UAE has been a primary destination of choice for Indian workers, followed by Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Malaysia and Bahrain. Workers from the Indian states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Bihar have been relocating, making the shortage in these areas even more severe. ‘Until the crisis hit, Indian workers comprised 42.5% of the total labour force in the UAE, with 65% in the blue-collar category with descent earning possibilities.

Youngsters lack orientation and proper counseling at the right age and stage of life.

If schools catch them young and watch them grow VOCATIONAL EDUCATION can transform Indian economic development scenario and lead to very high per capita income.