Bangladesh has ranked first among the South Asian countries in secondary education, and fourth in the region in digital skills.
The data was published by World Skills Clock, a collaboration between UNICEF with the Ed Commission, GenU, and World Data Lab, on World Youth Skills Day. It is an interactive webtool to visualise the scale of the global learning and skills crisis now and in the future.
In Bangladesh, 42.2 per cent of the youth have secondary education. Secondary skills are based on students meeting benchmarks in either literacy and/or numeracy based on recent data.
World Skills Clock assumes that those in school, based on total net enrolment rate, achieve this calculated rate of skills acquisition, and those out of school achieve half of this value. In this way, it accounts for those both in school and learning, as well as those out of school and learning, and allows us to account for the school closure learning shock experienced during the pandemic.
But in digital skills, Bangladesh is behind India, Sri Lanka and Bhutan with 84.9 per cent of the country’s youths lacking the skills.
According to World Skills Clock, digital skills refer to the ability to use and understand technology and is measured by the proportion of youth who are able to perform basic computer-related activities.
These include: copying or moving a file or folder, using copy and paste tools to duplicate or move information within a document, sending e-mails with attached files, and transferring files between a computer and other devices.
In a recent report, ‘Recovering Learning: Are Children and Youth on Track in Skills Development?’, UNICEF presented the World Skills Clock data, saying less than half of youth are on track to attain the full range of skills needed to thrive in school, work and life.
Evidence suggests poor skills attainment among the youth, but particularly so among those in low-income countries where the share of youth on track in skills acquisition is lowest, according to the report.