MONTH LONG SKILL SUPPORT MISSION CAMPAIGNING 2019

UNDER THE AEGIS

Of FVTRS AND SAMIDA

Since its inception the SAMDA has undertaken several initiatives to achieve youth
empowerment in particular the dropouts and never enrolled through skill development. Increase
of women participation in workforce, skill enhancement, employability and sustainable income
generation that has given further boost to Tribal economy and through this campaigning under
Skill India mission supported by FVTRS the operational areas are facilitated this through
equipping youth with market relevant skills and lead them to a path of self-sufficiency through
entrepreneurship. Following initiatives have been undertake taken to facilitate skill development
to spur entrepreneurship

1. Short term Skill Development Training in Tailoring, carpentry, zari and zardosi, motor
repairing, driving, NTFP

Through a wide network of Tribal and rural areas of Visakhapatnam District Andhra Pradesh
over ------------------ candidates have been enrolled and special focus is laid on enrolment of
women. There is nearly 97% increase in seeking admissions in 2018 as compared to 2014 to
reach ------------ trainees and there is enhanced demand for office Management, Electronics,
Fashion Design & Technology, and Computer Aided Embroidery & Designing etc. We are also
seeing active participation from women in new age job roles aligned to Industry across
in skills like welding, automobile mechanics etc.

The efforts are made to continually revise job roles taking into account market demand
and are cognizant of industry requirements for trained youth. Programs under the
Skill India Mission are designed to train in relevant skills that are sought by employers,
but are also sensitive to their needs while the women are pointed towards apparel, beautician to
align skill development efforts to the national missions by ensuring a steady flow of
skilled workforce. These programs are also generating lakhs of jobs, particularly for women by
creation of job roles like caregiver, midwives, nurses, diabetes educators etc.

Recognition of Prior Learning through market study and learning requirements is being done and
prospective candidates have been oriented in different skill areas, recognizing their existing skills
through a formal certificate and giving them a means to earn better livelihood.

The trainings and policy of FVTRS focuses on inclusive skill development with the objective of
increased women participation for better economic productivity. To achieve this, emphasis has
been laid on creating additional infrastructure for flexible training delivery mechanisms and local
need-based training are visualized.
.
2. Partnerships

The partnerships with Private & Non-Government Organizations to boost skill development are
some of the collaborative efforts with private players is targeting remote Tribal villages to foster
empowerment through skill development and creation of occupational opportunities. The project
is focused towards vulnerable and marginalized groups and tribal population. The project aims to
give employment & entrepreneurship opportunities to youth belonging to the economically
disadvantaged sections. We are holistically tackling the root causes of poverty by creating an
ownership based, organized creative manufacturing ecosystem for micro entrepreneurs. The
comprehensive approach helps communities assess their traditional skill base, organize them into
production units, develop products that appeal to modern markets, and create consistent demand
to create sustainable businesses at the lowest possible costs. This approach has broadened the
incomes of artisans in non-farm occupations by leveraging their artisanal skills and integrating
them into the creative industries sector.

Future jobs and industry-oriented courses aligned are nearly 50 job roles in local areas which are
concentrated towards skill training and our center is encouraging participation of women in new-
age job roles aligned to Industry and these programs have sparked interest among youth to train
themselves in skills for job roles in unconventional and new-age areas and we have partnered
with industry leaders.

3. EDP

Entrepreneurial Initiatives is committed to facilitate growth of Tribal entrepreneurs and for

which the Executive Development Programs are designed with the objective to inculcate
entrepreneurial values, attitude and motivation among the trainees to take up challenges to set up
an enterprise and Group Enterprises. The Livelihood Business Incubation approach is applied to
promote entrepreneurs.

Skill development is adding something more to the abilities that we have and move it a step
ahead so as to keep on developing. The necessity of skill development are to survive in the
advancing world – survival of the fittest, to compete with other advanced person – to compete by
developing skill, to come at the higher level so as to achieve success and to integrate the higher
advanced and lower advanced

Today's generation is very different from the generations before it. They have been brought up in
a time of rapid political, social, cultural and technological change. They have been receiving
excellent training; they have travelled widely and come across many cultures. They are open to
the world, put strong emphasis on personal relationships, sensible, self-critical, extremely
creative, enthusiastic and willing to work under indigenous leadership and are best suited to
urban areas but mission structures need to change so that their strengths will flourish. They need
different concepts of training, adjusted work assignments carefully chosen tasks for a limited
time, a cooperative leadership style, flexible structures, life in a team, sympathetic personal
supervision, simple administration and a lifestyle of continuous learning.
(2) Short-term work is important

Short-term work has been available for a long time (such as OM), and it prepares young people
for world mission. Former generations would have gone into missionary work even without this
exposure - but not so the young generation. They feel so aware of their own limitations that they
do not have the courage to commit themselves to long-term work. They need to experience
personally that God can brings them through and use their gifts and experiences to do something
meaningful and bless people. Young people mainly learn experientially (by doing and personal
involvement) and not so much through reasoning and rational insights. Therefore short-term
work is very important today. God uses it to boost significant ministries and simultaneously the
Lord calls people into long-term mission work.

(3) Sending churches want to be involved directly

Mission flows from God's heart and He has chosen the church as his primary instrument in world
mission. The church sends her missionaries to build Christ's church in the country of service and
the sending church in return receives lots of blessings. This fundamental truth has not always
been recognised by churches and mission agencies. Today churches do not like to be restricted to
praying and giving but they want to be directly involved in the life and ministry of their
missionaries, use their gifts and experience, be well informed and actively involved in the
decision making. By this the church's competence in mission and their involvement is greatly
advanced. Their missionary's ministry becomes their own project and the sending church an
active partner of the missionary team. This requires close communication between church and
mission agency. It requires effective structures, global thinking, simple administration,
delegation of tasks and commitment to partnership.

(4) Secularized West: Crisis and opportunity for mission

The "Christian West" is something from the past and was replaced by the post-modern time.
Today personal feelings are important, all opinions and lifestyles are equally acceptable which
leads to a break-down of consensus in society: everybody has his own truth and life-style, it's
like a supermarket of ideology . In the city of Leipzig only 8% of the population belongs to a
Christian church. These characteristics of the post-modern time are also present in our churches
today. The uniqueness of Jesus is questioned and world mission, God's claim to the whole world,
considered as an offence. The piety of Muslims and Buddhists is admired. Many people consider
themselves as Christians even if they do not know the Gospel - and it seems unthinkable to
question their beliefs. Today we need new, fresh answers to many fundamental questions.

(5) World mission on our doorstep

At the same time, our cities have become very multicultural. In many districts the majority of the
population comes from abroad. And even in rural areas there are big homes for asylum seekers
with people of many nationalities - the United Nations on our doorstep. Many international
neighbors from Romania, Brazil or Ghana for instance are already followers of Christ. How can
they feel at home in our churches? Churches have to find new methods of worship, incorporating
these people in church life.

Other international residents have never heard the gospel: World mission on our doorstep. How
can our churches fulfil the great commission in their neighborhood effectively? Mission agencies
and missionaries with international experience and language skills can help effectively. I am also
grateful for African, Korean and Latin-American missionaries (besides many US-Americans)
who come to Germany in order to help in church planting and mission. World mission no longer
is sending missionaries abroad - it is a network of relationships and ministries: from everywhere
to everywhere.

(6) A new type of missionary is required

The rapid social and political change in the world has also reached the countries of service
(globalization). Their big cities hardly differ from Frankfurt and Hamburg. In rural parts of
Africa, technology may have stopped, but in the cities even more people carry mobile phones
than in Europe. Our computer software is developed in India, radios are assembled in North
Africa. The economic boom in South Asia has catapulted these countries and cultures into
modern times - regarding economy, social sciences, education, language and culture. Today most
of the world's unreached people live in the jungle of big cities and no longer in the real jungle.

If missionaries want to reach these hearts, activities must be geared to the people and their needs
and values. They need to address their issues for today. This is relevant for church meetings,
literature, bible correspondence courses, radio programmes etc. Successful methods of the past
may be outdated today. Missionaries need to constantly reflect their ministries, take over new
tasks, continuously re-train, develop an attitude of life-long learning.

(7) Indigenous Christians take over the leadership

In many countries strong churches have grown in the meantime and self-confident leaders have
taken over the leadership. Often missionaries work under their leadership or in cooperation with
them. Missionaries are no longer pioneers who develop and put into practice projects
independently. They are guests workers who fill specific gaps where there are no local experts
available - for example in theological teaching, children's ministry and youth work, social work,
development projects, training etc. This requires a new type of personality from missionaries:
ability to work in a team with good communication and conflict resolution skills, willing to
compromise. They need humility, sympathetic understanding and cross-cultural communication.
At times church leaders set other priorities than our liking. There might be financial expectations
or ethnic prejudices or focus on the support of existing churches - and a mutual solution needs to
be found in sensitivity, love and grace. Cooperation is not always easy.

(8) Modern communication offers great opportunities

The new communication technologies have revolutionized our world. News and pictures travel
around the world in seconds. One mouse click and the whole world know - the most remote
places of the world are connected - and the same holds true for missionary work.

There are new forms of mission work: the evangelization via satellite TV, Christian movies on
DVD, bibles and theological literature available on the Internet even in "closed" countries, chat
rooms provide discreet discussion rounds with people from all countries, evangelistic
programmes on an interactive webpage and theological training through email. These are
fantastic missionary opportunities but they are no substitute for the living example of an
ambassador for Christ.

The life of the missionary has also changed dramatically: solar energy and water purification,
satellite phone in remote mountains, satellite navigation in the jungle, language learning via CD,
schooling of missionary kids through the Internet, instant access to all of the libraries of the
world. Cheap air tickets permit visits from friends or a brief visit at home.

The communication with home churches and supporters has become much easier. Just one email
and hundreds of friends can pray specifically. Pictures sent by email illustrate the ministry
minutes later at the information board in church, a phone call with a mobile phone during church
service provides up-to-date information, a video clip etc.... There are hardly any limits to your
imagination and technical possibilities. This results in high expectations from supporters at home
in regard to regular news and to the quality of presentations - and the missionary needs to
compete with the information overkill. In the end communication is not a matter of technical
possibilities but of personality.

(9) Missionaries from the Southern hemisphere

The most impressive characteristic of modern mission is the fantastic growth of the mission
movement in many southern countries (traditional missionary receiving countries). With great
enthusiasm and sacrifices they send their own missionaries to unreached areas in their own
country and to other countries and many support their missionaries financially with great
sacrifices. Today half the global mission movement comes from the new sending countries of the
South: Korean missionaries in Central Asia, Brazilian missionaries in North Africa, Philippinos
in the Far East... The "Evangelical Church in Westafrica" (ECWA) in Nigeria alone has sent
1070 missionaries; the Presbyterian Churches in Mizoram in the north east of India have sent
900 missionaries. The missionaries from the South come mainly from cultures which are very
community orientated and thus have other needs than Western missionaries. Their sending
churches and mission organisation’s often do not have the same financial resources as European
agencies. They need different forms of mission structures for sending, leadership and care
supervision - "new wineskins for new wine".

Missionaries from countries of the South also come to Europe. In Germany alone there are 200
Korean missionaries who proclaim the gospel to "German heathens". Possibly the spirituality
and prayer fervor of an Asian missionary or the joyful faith of an African or the courage of a
Latin-American missionary is more attractive to our fellow Germans than the rationality of a
European. In Germany too we need ambassadors of Christ from other countries in order to reach
our younger generation with the gospel.

(10) Mission is more than evangelism

In the past years powerful prayer movements for unreached people have come into being and the
Lord has done great things through them. Nevertheless there is a growing awareness that the
great commission is more than techniques, operation plans, superficial evangelism and
impressive numbers of conversions. The center piece of the Great Commission according to
Matthew 28 is the command: "make disciples". This is more than preaching of the gospel or
leading people to a decision for Jesus. All areas of life have to come under the leadership of
Christ and each believer has to find a place in a local church. This cannot be achieved through
the mass media even though they might be very effective in evangelism. We need living example
of what God's grace can do in one's life, discipleship needs to be acted out in life. Our personal
life needs to be transparent in order to encourage people to follow Christ.

(11) To preach Jesus in everything

Our time is characterized by great challenges and disasters: flooding, volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, drought, Aids, epidemics, ethnic conflicts, refugees, incredible suffering in slums,
persecution of Christians, spiritually bound people, closed countries and hearts closed for the
gospel in the Western world. Here we need signs of God's love and great creativity in order to
open doors for the proclamation of the gospel. Jesus always addressed the whole person.
Salvation is to be found only in a personal faith in Jesus Christ. But this message must be
communicated through word, deed and personality of the ambassador. It needs to start at the
basic needs and interests of the people. The church of Christ is called to be a blessing for her
town and country.

(12) Cooperation is of great importance

The challenges of this world are so immense that no church, mission agency or initiative can deal
with it alone. Various knowledge, resources, experience and staff are needed. All efforts need to
be coordinated. Jesus prayed especially for the unity of his disciples (John 17). This starts where
Western missionaries work with colleagues from the South, often in multicultural teams. They
can encourage each other, complement each other’s expertise and gifting, learn and encourage
each other - but it also needs careful communication, willingness to compromise and grace so
that the cultural and personal differences work out as enrichment for each other.

To a growing extent this already takes place in regional partnerships. In one ethnic group in the
north of India for example 400 mission agencies and churches work together. Each one adds it's
part to the whole. This requires a wide horizon so that everybody is able to recognize and value
the coworkers who Jesus has placed next to them. Own ideas and priorities may have to be put
aside in order to achieve the common goal. Grand coalitions can only be built when everybody is
willing to work together and to agree on compromises. This is the key for the future. Only
together we can achieve it - and the Lord of mission will do it. God reaches his goal.

Skill India - What is the impact and what needs to be done?

The Skill India Mission sought to unify the earlier disjointed attempts to build skills and provide
vocational training to a working population that often finds itself with either in evolving world.
How far have we really come?

The benefits of a growing economy are often reflected in the growing number of well-paid jobs
in a country. Consequently, any policy that stimulates the economy to grow, has an impact on
job creation and the overall employability of the country’s workforce. India finds itself in a
context today where young people are entering the workforce every year. To make the most of
the demographic dividend, it is critical to improve the employability of the youth. For this, the
newly set up Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship had taken up the task of
coordinating all skill development efforts across the country. This includes the removal of the
disconnect between demand and supply of skilled manpower, building a vocational and technical
training framework, building new skills and innovative thinking, not only for existing jobs but
also jobs that are to be created.

Recent reports on the much-touted skilling scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana
(PMKVY), indicates that policy is still far from achieving its intended result. According to the
report in the Indian Express, data revealed that of the 30.67 lakh candidates who had been trained
or were undergoing training across the country in June 2017, only 2.9 lakh had received
placement offers.

With increasing political and economic pressure, the Indian government has reportedly decided
to create a hefty stimulus package to revive the growth rate of the country’s economy. Amidst
the slowdown, how has the Skill India mission fared?

The structure of Skill India mission

The Skill India program was introduced on the 15th of July 2015 along with the creation of the
new National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. The “demand-driven, reward-
based” Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) flagship scheme was set up with a
promise to train over two million people in one year – the NSDC had in 2014-15 trained 1.3
million people. Under the mission, the previous target of training 150 million people by 2022
was raised to a much loftier goal of 400 million people by 2022.

The Skill India initiative was to ensure that the millions who enter the job market untrained,
receive formal skill-building opportunities. Many hoped to be an improvement over previous
skilling and vocational training programs. A much-welcomed move, the policy still seems to be a
nascent stage of implementation and as a result, has had a limited impact.

With a roster of schemes under its belt, the Skill India mission has been similar to skill and
vocational training programs of the past; big investments but little impact. A government-
appointed panel, headed by Sharda Prasad, former head of the Directorate General of Education
& Training, raised questions about the efficacy of programs like PMKVY and the short-sighted
manner in which National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and India’s Sector Skill
Councils (SSC) operated in a report published this May.

The Role of SSCs

The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was set up by the Ministry of Finance
back in 2009 in an effort to centralize India’s attempt to skill its growing workforce. Working in
Public-Private Partnership model, the NSDC looks at imparting skill and vocational development
training through the various Sector Skill Councils (SSCs). These SSCs subsequently are meant to
run such training, specific to their respective industries. The SSCs occupy a unique position
within India’s skilling ecosystem: they are autonomous industry-led bodies that conduct skill-gap
studies, develop the curriculum for the vocational training institutes (through the creation of
‘National Occupational Standards’), and then crucially assess and certify trainees who have been
skilled. It is here that the Sharda Panel observes that the gaps within the Skill India mission arise.

“Their [SSC] entire focus seems to have been on the implementation of the PMKVY without
regard to whether it will really meet the exact skill needs of the sectoral industry or turn out
skilled manpower of global standards or persons that would get placed after the training,” says
the report. The Sharda Panel also pointed out how such bodies had not specified the exact role of
the industry, government agencies and other stakeholders to ensure accountability. As a
conclusion, the Panel report stated that “Most of the SSCs in their quest to achieve the targets,
compromised in quality of training, assessment and certification leading to the current situation
of mess”.

What can be done?

Though skill training in the country has improved in recent years, the absence of job linkages is
only aggravating the problem of unemployment. The newly appointed Minister for Skill
Development and Entrepreneurship, Dharmendra Pradhan has echoed a similar concern. “We
have to think big way, a lot of technologies are coming, conventional jobs are squeezed, new
verticals are emerging, what are they, they have to be informed to employable youths which all
big jobs are there.”

Skill development starts with identifying future job prospects and segmenting it according to the
need and feasibility of training candidates. The PPP model of operation of SSCs presents a great
chance of bringing industry best practices in learning and development into such training
modules. Private players can use technology to automate, improve and scale training and
certification approach of skill-based training. By creating better linkages between the many
stakeholders in the process and establishing key deliverables and a clear chain of accountability
would help make such training programs more effective. Working towards increasing the
accessibility of such training programs, in parallel, should also be looked at. A recently
proposed move of making such training more districts centric is a step towards that direction.

As India aims to have one of the strongest economic growth stories in the 21st century, it
becomes vital for it ensure it growing workforce is capable to handle the incoming disruptions
and find suitable jobs. And a core part of this is to tackle the problem of unskilled labor in India
and fix its skilling initiatives, today rather than tomorrow.

In the next three years, 120 million jobs in the world’s 10 largest economies will need retraining
or re-skilling. To adapt to this new environment and help shape it, employees need to embrace
continuous learning. Amid these changes, HR needs to not think, act, or be like traditional HR;
they need to understand their job is now “human transformation”. In this issue, we will focus on
what HR leaders and organizations need to consider today to prepare for tomorrow.

Today, learning and development is being looked upon as a strategic driver of organizational
performance. The concept is not new; Peter Senge had introduced the concept of “Learning
Organization”, an organization which continuously transforms itself through member-learning.
Today, Organizations are taking this one step ahead. They are treating learning beyond a mere
means to build organizational capabilities and using it as a powerful tool to engage and retain
employees. Employees too consider learning an important input for career growth and are
demanding better personalization, content and engaging learning experiences. In accordance,
learning and development roles and responsibilities are evolving, demanding greater
participation from various stakeholders—managers, employees, leaders, learning partners, etc.
One such important cog in the wheel is the line manager or employee supervisor. He or she is the
strongest and closest link to the learning needs, styles and expectations of the employee.

The Role of the Modern Manager

The modern-day line manager plays a vital role in employee development. The manager-
employee relationship is one that is based on trust and knowing each other, and this can be
leveraged to maximize employees’ contribution. The ultimate objective of L&D is to gain
business results. Here is the “5As framework” that outlines how line managers can contribute
best to the organizational L&D agenda:

1. Align learning goals with organizational strategy: As the connecting link between the
employee and the organization, line managers must outline the learning objectives while
keeping in mind their employees’ needs and the organizational objectives. They can
begin by laying out learning goals and giving employees a clear direction to outperform.

2. Anticipate success: The line manager is the best person to correlate learning inputs with
performance outcomes. Every line manager must set learning expectations in terms of
performance improvement. For this they must truly want team members to develop and
succeed- this is a mindset change that line managers must cultivate, i.e., they must
envision success along with the team.

3. Create an alliance: The employee-manager dyad is a tight-knit one where the line
manager understands team members best—their unique learning needs, learning
expectations and learning roadblocks. Line managers must encourage and empower
employees to learn in a personalized, always-on way. For this, they must generate a state
of creative tension, i.e. a culture of continuous improvement within the team. Knowledge
management, proactive assessment of learning needs, coaching and mentoring and
learning discussions are ways of making learning available and accessible to the team.
Line managers themselves must be visible and accessible if the employees need them and
must make the best of the alliance to achieve organizational goals.

4. Ensure application on the job: Research indicates that 85-90% of a person’s job
knowledge is learned on the job and only 10-15% is learned through formal training
events (Raybould, 2000).Line managers must create the opportunities for employees to
apply learnings on the job. They must devise new projects, shadowing methods, new
roles and responsibilities for team members to practically implement their learning. More
importantly, it means a cultural acceptance of placing trust in the employee, accepting
any mistakes at the outset and having faith that the employee will succeed.
 5. Drive accountability: Line managers must tie-in learning with performance and career
discussions and monitor the achievement of learning goals. They must constantly analyze
whether learning has translated to performance on the job and course-correct if required.
Supervisors must give employees timely and objective feedback and recognize and
celebrate successes to reinforce desirable outcomes.

How L&D can empower line managers

L&D strategy is often designed with the line manager at the fulcrum. However, mere design is
not enough. Line managers and supervisors must be empowered to help them achieve the above
objectives. Despite the decentralized shape that L&D is slowly taking, HR and L&D departments
remain the core custodians of organizational learning and must empower line managers to help
their employees learn and grow.

1. Make learning KRAs and KPIs an integral part of the business.

2. Involve line managers in learning needs analysis to gain true insights into the learning
needs and styles of each unique employee.

3. Involve line managers in designing the learning content especially for functional and
business modules.

4. Train line managers to spearhead learning discussions, learning assessments and

coaching and mentoring interventions.

5. Provide learning platforms based on the latest learning technologies like social learning,
mobile learning, bite-sized learning modules, massive open online courses (MOOCs) etc.
This will make learning available to line managers and employee anytime, anywhere.

Learning is no longer just the prerogative of HR and L&D; it has evolved into an organization-
wide priority giving leaders sleepless nights. To become truly transformational, learning and
development must be owned by the line managers, with the centers of excellence as the
proponents of a learning culture.

Vocational and Technical Education

Current Trends

The trend in contemporary K–12 vocational education is away from the use of the word
vocational to label these programs. Most states have selected a broader term, although a few use
vocational technical education. A number of states have followed the lead of the national
vocational education organizations and adopted the term career and technical education. Others
use variations, such as career and technology education and professional-technical education,
and several states include the word workforce in describing these programs. The changes in
terminology reflect a changing economy, in which technical careers have become the mainstay.

When the term career education first became popular in the 1970s, it was distinguished from
vocational education by its emphasis on general employability and adaptability skills applicable
to all occupations, while vocational education was primarily concerned with occupational skill
training for specific occupations. That basic definition of career education remains appropriate
today.

The purpose of career and technical education is to provide a foundation of skills that enable
high school students to be gainfully employed after graduation–either full-time or while
continuing their education or training. Nearly two-thirds of all graduates of career and technical
programs enter some form of postsecondary program.

Across the United States, career and technical education programs are offered in about 11,000
comprehensive high schools, several hundred vocational-technical high schools, and about 1,400
area vocational-technical centers. Public middle schools typically offer some career and technical
education courses, such as family and consumer sciences and technology education. About 9,400
postsecondary institutions offer technical programs, including community colleges, technical
institutes, skill centers, and other public and private two-and four-year colleges. In 2001 there
were 11 million secondary and postsecondary career and technical education students in the
United States, according to the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

The subject areas most commonly associated with career and technical education are: business
(office administration, entrepreneurship); trade and industrial (e.g., automotive technician,
carpenter, computer numerical control technician); health occupations (nursing, dental, and
medical technicians); agriculture (food and fiber production, agribusiness); family and consumer
sciences (culinary arts, family management and life skills); marketing (merchandising, retail);
and technology (computer-based careers).

Career and technical education programs usually are offered as a sequence of courses
supplemented by work-based experiences, such as internships or apprenticeships. These work
experiences remain a hallmark of career and technical education.

Rethinking the Mission

For the last two decades of the twentieth century, business led the charge for school reform in
order to have better prepared students for the workplace. Yet career and technical education
programs, which have the mission of readying young people for employment, continue to be
pushed aside by courses designed to prepare students for high-stakes academic assessments. All
states have testing requirements for high school students in mathematics, science, English
language arts, and sometimes social studies. One result of the emphasis on academic testing is a
continuing decline in the number of students enrolled in career and technical education.

To reverse declining enrollments, career and technical education faces a twofold challenge: to
restructure its programs and to rebuild its image. Traditional vocational programs provided
students with job-specific skills that many parents viewed as too narrow for their children.

The trend is for career and technical education programs to rethink their mission by asking how
they can prepare students with high-level academic skills and the broad-based transferable skills
and technical skills required for participation in the "new economy," where adaptability is key.
Programs adopt this dual approach in an effort to make career and technical education a realistic
option for large numbers of students to achieve academic success, which will translate into
employment for them.

These programs teach broad skills that are applicable to many occupations. This preparation for
the world of work is anchored in strong academic skills, which students learn how to apply to
real-world situations. These academic skills include the competencies needed in the
contemporary workplace as well as the knowledge and skills valued by academic education and
measured by state examinations.

The reality is that the academic skills needed for the workplace are often more rigorous than the
academic skills required for college. The multidisciplinary approach of most work tasks and the
amount of technology and information in the workplace contribute to the heightened
expectations of all workers, including entry-level.

For career and technical education programs to flourish in the early twentieth century's test-
driven school environment, they must: (1) find ways to continue to prepare students with the
skills and knowledge needed in the increasingly sophisticated workplace; (2) embed, develop,
and reinforce the academic standards/benchmarks that are tested on the state-mandated
assessments; and (3) teach the essential skills that all students need for success in life.

Organizing Programs Around Career Clusters

The workplace requires three sets of skills of most workers:

 Strong academics, especially in English language arts, mathematics, and science, as well
as computer skills;
 Career specific skills for a chosen career cluster;
 Virtues such as honesty, responsibility, and integrity.
The U.S. Department of Education Office of Vocational and Adult Education has identified
sixteen broad career clusters that reflect a new direction for education. The clusters were created
to assist educators in preparing students for a changing workplace. The intent is for secondary
and postsecondary educators, employers, and industry group representatives to work together to
formulate cluster standards. The careers in each cluster range from entry level through
professional/technical management in a broad industry field. Each cluster includes both the
academic and technical skills and knowledge needed for careers and postsecondary education.
These clusters provide a way for schools to organize course offerings so students can learn about
the whole cluster of occupations in a career field. It is an excellent tool to assist students in
identifying their interests and goals for the future. The sixteen career clusters are:

 Agriculture and Natural Resources

 Architecture and Construction
 Arts, Audiovisual Technology, and Communications
 Business and Administration
 Education and Training
 Finance
 Government and Public Administration
 Health Science
 Hospitality and Tourism
 Human Services
 Information Technology
 Law and Public Safety
 Manufacturing
 Retail/Wholesale Sales and Services
 Scientific Research/Engineering
 Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics

The preparation of students in the career clusters must include (1) academic skills, (2) cluster-
specific standards, and (3) broad transferable skills. All of these aspects of the curriculum must
be organized in a continuum. As students grow and develop through this continuum, they will
prepare themselves for broader and higher-level opportunities.

The Academic Issues

The 1983 publication of a government report, A Nation at Risk, sounded an alarm about the
competitiveness of U.S. students in comparison to their international counterparts. Education
systems responded by raising standards in mathematics, science, English language arts, and, in
some states, other disciplines such as social studies as well. States have passed legislation and
implemented regulations in hopes of solving the problem.
Because the business community was directly involved in the school reform process, business
concepts were applied in schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Examples included Total Quality
Management, continuous improvement, and the strategic planning techniques used by senior
management to change business organizations.

Many schools also spent a great deal of energy creating vision, mission, and goal statements in
their quest for higher student achievement. By the early 1990s, however, it was clear that these
endeavors and others, such as site-based management, while well intended, had not improved
student performance. Too often, the institutional issues took precedence over the needs of the
students.

Schools then made a more aggressive effort to focus instruction on raising achievement, in what
became referred to as the "standards movement." Again, this concept was taken directly from
business, but industry standards for products and services were not easily transferable to the
intellectual development of children. Furthermore, the rules of engagement in education are
fundamentally different from the rules of engagement in the business sector. In business,
everyone is expendable, whereas in education, nearly everyone is protected. Moreover, education
is committed to equity as well as excellence.

Although the standards movement was intended to bring focus and direction to the curriculum, it
led instead to a proliferation of content to be taught in the curriculum. This can be seen in
research by Dr. Robert Marzano and colleagues in What Americans Believe Students Should
Know: A Survey of U.S. Adults (1999). The authors examined standards across all subjects and
grade levels and identified 200 distinct standards with 3,093 related benchmarks. From teachers'
estimates of how long it would take to teach each benchmark adequately, the researchers
calculated that it would require 15,465 hours to cover all of them. Yet, students have only 9,042
hours of instructional time over the course of their K–12 careers.

The International Center for Leadership in Education conducted a survey in 1999 to identify the
skills and knowledge graduates need for success in the world beyond school. The survey,
reported in The Overcrowded Curriculum (1999), asked respondents to identify the top thirty-
five standards–in terms of what a high school senior should know and be able to do–from a list
of content topics commonly found in states' exit standards. The top-rated skills in mathematics,
science, and English language arts bear a striking resemblance to skills typically covered in
career and technical education programs. Many of the lowest-rated topics remain a central focus
of instruction in these disciplines.

More School Reform

When the standards movement did not translate into graduates with the skills that corporate
America deemed necessary, business leaders pressed elected officials to instill more rigor into
the system and to prove that students were mastering what was taught. In response, states
initiated or upgraded mandatory statewide testing programs to find out what students know.

Although these testing programs have served some useful purposes, they do not measure a broad
scope of knowledge. Schools do not have enough time to teach all the standards, benchmarks,
performance objectives, goals, and other subcategories of standards, so states cannot test students
on all of them.

While raising academic standards was a central concern of K–12 education for two decades,
issues raised by business about students' inability to apply their skills and knowledge on the job
did not receive widespread attention. Vocational education was the only area uniformly to
embrace the necessity for students to learn how to apply their knowledge in the real world.

The New Workplace

At the conclusion of World War II, the adults in the United States, many of whom grew up
during the Great Depression, wanted their children to have a better standard of living than they
did. They saw higher education as the ticket to that better life. Meanwhile, Europe and Asia
focused more on rebuilding their war-torn countries than on education, thus allowing American
colleges and universities to have the highest academic standards in the world for the next several
decades.

America's reversal of educational prominence happened at the time when technology began to
reshape the workplace. By the early 1990s the academic skills needed in the workplace often
surpassed the academic skills required for entry into college. Like the United States, other
countries experienced the call for school reform, but they did not need to be convinced of the
link between education and work. The United States, with a different value system, retreated to
the old ways: raise standards and define excellence through testing. But the reality is that the
tests do not measure the skills that underpin the workplace, and U.S. graduates continue to be at
a disadvantage in the global and domestic marketplaces.

Another significant event that occurred in the late 1980s was the shift from big business to small
business. Companies across the America began to downsize. In small companies, broad skills
and the ability to handle multiple tasks are of paramount importance. Even entry-level workers
are expected to be jacks-of-all-trades.

The contemporary workplace is dynamic and entrepreneurial. Approximately one-third of jobs is

in flux every year, meaning that they have just been added or will be eliminated. The job security
once enjoyed in big companies is no sure bet anymore. Employees must continuously reinvent
themselves by seeking out the additional training and new skills that will keep them marketable.
Skills and adaptability have become the new job security.
The new economy requires that employees be able to apply mathematics, science, and technical
reading and writings skills in a variety of job tasks. The trend in career and technical education is
to teach transferable skills via the various occupational clusters. These clusters are industry-
specific enough to enable students to develop employment skills without being so limited as to
track students into narrowly defined or dead-end jobs. To accomplish this, the programs provide
a strong academic foundation and teach students the processes of applying this knowledge.

The work environment is always in transition, with changing equipment, tasks, and
responsibilities. Technology is progressing too rapidly to train students on the latest equipment,
so the trend in career and technical education is to focus on teaching the skills, concepts, and
systems that underpin technology rather than how to operate a particular piece of technology.

Use Research about Learning

A growing body of education research supports the efficacy of the methodology used in career
and technical education programs. Research documents that the capacity to apply knowledge to
practical situations is not only an important ability for students to have, but also an effective way
to improve their academic performance. Research also shows that students learn more when they
are motivated to do so. In career and technical education, motivation stems from the realization
that what they are learning has a practical application to the world of work.

Arnold Packer, Chairman of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills

(SCANS) 2000 Center at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, has found that "solving
realistic problems motivates students to work on their academics. They have their own answer to
the oft-asked question: "Why do I have to learn this?" This blend of academic, career, and
computer learning helps them acquire the skills needed for successful careers while they achieve
to meet state standards."

The National Research Council has found that when instruction is based on students' interests
and aptitudes and is appropriate to their learning styles, students are more motivated to learn.
Academic performance generally improves, for example, when students attend magnet schools
and theme academies.

The research suggests that the ability to apply knowledge requires experience in using that
knowledge in a variety of ways over a period of time, drawing on the same knowledge base.
Career and technical education does a good job in this regard. Skill and knowledge are taught
and reinforced through hands-on activities and real-world applications.

The National Research Council's comprehensive 1999 report, How People Learn: Bridging
Research and Practice, shared key findings of the research literature on human learning,
curriculum design, and the learning environment. One of those findings concerned
metacognition. Metacognition occurs when a learner takes a new piece of information, debates
its validity in relation to what else he or she knows about the subject, and then considers how it
expands his or her understanding of the topic. Most career and technical education programs
employ more metacognition activities than traditional programs, in which many students spend
the school day listening to teachers disseminate knowledge. Learning by doing is the standard
approach in their courses, as students use skills and knowledge to create products and model
solutions to problems.

Research shows that students will try to rise to the level of expectation established for them. For
career and technical education, this means having as high expectations for students' academic
performance as for their performance of job-related skills.

In the technological, information-based economy, workers must be able to apply high-level,

integrated academic skills on the job. As career and technical education programs redesign
curriculum to embed academic standards, their students have an advantage over other students
because career and technical education students also learn how to apply these skills.