Our world faces a global education & skills crisis. Today, education systems are struggling to recover from the COVID-19 crisis which has shut down the majority of the world’s schools and interrupted the learning of over a billion students. The situation was critical even before the global pandemic struck, with six in 10 schoolchildren worldwide leaving school unable to read or do basic maths, according to estimates from UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics. The agency estimates that 69 million new teachers are needed worldwide by 2030, if the international community is to meet its Sustainable Development Goal to deliver a quality education to all.

Education is not standing still. New breakthroughs in learning science are transforming the way that we understand the process of teaching. Advances in learning technology are giving teachers new tools to deliver learning in the classroom as well as handing policymakers unprecedented powers to track learning. As the world of work is reshaped by communications technology, robotics and artificial intelligence, education systems are facing enormous pressures to adapt and equip learners with new skills and competencies. These changes may yet transform the traditional classroom as we know it.

• ü Invigorating deliberations on skill development policies & frameworks for 'New-age Skills'.
• ü Showcasing global and national innovations, best practices & lessons learnt.
• ü Platform for national and international collaborations and partnerships.
• ü Platform for networking and interactions with leaders from industry & government.

• ü Large Corporate Houses Public Sectors Undertakings
• ü Small and Medium Enterprises
• ü Government Officials
• ü State Skills Missions, Sector Skills Councils, NGOs, INGOs and Think Tank Groups
• ü Multi – lateral and Bilateral Agencies
• ü Universities and Higher Education Institutions
• ü Training Partners (TPs) and Industrial Training Institutes/Centres (ITIs /ITCs)
• ü International Counterparts
• ü Skill Consultancy Providers

Closing the global skills gap could add US$11.5 trillion to global GDP by 2028. Education and training systems need to keep pace with the new demands of labor markets that are continually challenged by technological disruption, demographic change and the evolving nature of work.

Governments are under increasing pressure to find solutions, including by involving the private sector in areas where changes are required. Few governments, however, are able to act rapidly and collaborate with private sector actors to reform education and training systems. On the other hand, businesses are initiating their own programmes aimed at skilling, upskilling and reskilling their workforces (and more broadly, communities), although few are able to effect systemic change alone.

The COVID-19 economic shock has made the skills gap broader and the need to close it more urgent. This calls for new investments and mechanisms for upskilling and reskilling, for both deeply human skills as well as digital skills. While the online education and training industry has seen a surge in interest from digitally connected workers in lockdown, it is critical that employers double down on retraining workers and that governments proactively build provisions around upskilling and reskilling into the massive fiscal stimulus they are injecting into economies to best prepare workers for the post-pandemic economy.

Announced at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos in January 2020, the Reskilling Revolution aims to provide better jobs, education and skills to 1 billion people in the next 10 years to contribute to future-proofing countries, companies and workers. It will offer a space for collaboration between business, government, and civil society to build a fairer, more inclusive world that will deliver benefits to economy and society for generations to come. The flagship initiative within the Reskilling Revolution is the Closing the Skills Gap Accelerator Model.

The Closing the Skills Gap Accelerators aim to create global and national public-private collaboration platforms to address skills gaps and to reshape education and training for the future. The accelerator model drives systems change, highlighting the need for collaborative action across different scales – not just institutional structures and policies but also norms, attitudes and through individual business commitments. This is done through a focus on four key areas for closing the global skills gaps:

National Level Action: The accelerator model brings together public and private sector leaders, generally Ministers and CEO's, to generate local insight, develop local needs-based action plans and drive their execution.

Global Learning Network: Each country accelerator along with champion countries are part of a global platform, to enable the acceleration of learning through the exchange of insights and experience.

Closing the Skills Gap Playbook: The Playbook looks to provide a guide for stakeholders with tools, resources and processes for action to close skills gaps and prepare for the Future of Work. It is a living document which is continuously updated with the learnings from the Global Accelerator Network and the work done by the rest of the Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society.

Country Portfolio:

Closing the Skills Gap Accelerators are currently established in eight (10) countries, with a goal to expand the model to build a global network of 15 countries accelerating the closing of skills gaps by the end of 2021.

The recently released QS 2019 Global Skills Gap Report demonstrates the clear misalignment between what competencies employers expect from graduates and the skills graduates actually bring to the table. By examining the importance employers place on certain skills and then their levels of satisfaction with these skills, we can reveal the skills gaps facing the graduate labor market.

In doing so, this report empowers employers, graduates, and universities to address these issues and nurture skills that are currently sorely lacking. For employers, the most important skills that graduates need to possess are problem solving, communication, and teamwork.

Whilst students agree that these top three skills are the most important, they do vastly underestimate the importance of data skills and resilience, ranking them in 12th and 13th place respectively compared to employers ranking them in 4th and 5th place.

Additionally, students overestimate the importance of creativity, leadership, and language skills.

Globally, employers had an average satisfaction score of 66 when it comes to graduate skills in the workplace, though this can differ widely depending on industry and country.