G20 India’s 3rd EdWG Meet Ends In Bhubaneswar With Thrust On Skilling Power Of Learners

Bhubaneswar: G20 India’s 3rd Education Working Group meeting concluded in Bhubaneswar on Friday with a commitment to ensure betterment of learners with respect to skilling, upskilling and reskilling.

The 3-day seminar and meeting held from April 26 to 28 had discussions focused on priority area of “building capacities, promoting life-long learning in context of future of work”.

K Sanjay Murthy, secretary Higher Education, Sanjay Kumar, Secretary School Education and Literacy and Atul Kumar Tiwari, Secretary Skill, Development and Entrepreneurship and senior officials of the Ministries attended the meeting.

More than 60 delegates from 27 countries including G20 members and international organisations including UNICEF, UNESCO and OECD were present.

The event commenced with a seminar around the topic of the future of work in collaboration with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. It was divided into three sessions of panel discussions. The themes of the panels were ‘Building an agile response to the needs of labour markets and institutional capacity building in the context future of work: enabling high quality technical and vocational education’, ‘Creating pathways between higher and vocational education’ and ‘Equipping children with a range of future skills to set them on course of lifelong learning’.

The delegates shared their policies and initiatives in vocational education and training. They also acknowledged the importance and the constant need to upskill and re-skill in order to keep up with the evolving world. They also discussed challenges that their countries are facing with respect to the future of work.

On the sidelines of the 3rd EdWG meeting and seminar, a multimedia exhibition on the same topic was also organised. Key participants in the exhibition were NCERT, MEITY, IKS (Indian Knowledge System), TRIFED, Singapore, UNICEF, Meta, IIT Bhubaneswar, IIM Sambalpur, NIT Rourkela, CSIR-IMMT, Auroville Foundation and others from industry, academia, government agencies, multilateral agencies, startups along with experience zone on ‘Future of Work’ and large technology exhibits. The exhibition was open to local institutions, students, academicians and researchers.

The meeting concluded with an excursion component. Delegates were taken to Sun Temple at Konark, followed by cultural performances in Puri. They were given ‘patachitra’ paintings as a memorable token for their visit to Bhubaneswar.

The 3rd EdWG meeting was successful in raising the awareness about G20. Various Jan Bhagidari events were also organised from Utkal Diwas till April 22. Several Mock G20s were conducted across the state which included 590 student participation. More than 1 lakh people participated in about 1,235 Jan Bhagidari events making Indias G20 Presidency a People’s Presidency.