By Emeka Aginam
With a record 210 million people out of work globally and employers reporting too few workers to hire with the right skills, the World Bank Group has  appealed to governments, donors, community leaders, and employers to focus more on education that prepares young people for the jobs market rather than on the time they spend in school.

Launching its education strategy for the next decade, World  Bank   said that better learning for all students worldwide was vital because economic growth, better development, adding that   less poverty depend on the knowledge and skills that people gain, not the years spent in a classroom.

“While a diploma may open doors to employment, it is a worker‘s skills that determine his or her productivity and ability to adapt to new technologies and opportunities.

“ Knowledge and skills also contribute to an individual’s ability to have a healthy, fulfilling life, an educated family, and be involved in their community as citizens and voters.” World Bank said in a statement.

The last decade, according to World Bank,  brought remarkable progress in education, with millions more children now in school as a result of more effective education and development policies and sustained national investments.

The number of out-of-school children of primary school age, World Bank said  fell from 106 million in 1999 to 68 million in 2008.

“ Even in the poorest countries, average primary school enrollment rates surged above 80 percent and completion rates above 60 percent. In the new strategy, the Bank reaffirms its commitment to helping countries get all children into school by the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“But with conditions in the world changing rapidly—from a record surge of young people at the secondary and tertiary levels in the Middle East and many emerging economies, to the rise of new middle-income countries anxious to boost their economic competitiveness by training more skilled, adaptable workforces, developing countries must transform gains in schooling into improved learning outcomes” World Bank said.

“A successful driver of development is what people learn, both in and out of school, from their very first years of life all the way through school, into the jobs market, and throughout their working lives,”  Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, said, adding that,  “For developing countries to fully reap the benefits of education—both by learning from ideas and through innovation, they need to unleash the potential of the human mind. And there is no better tool for doing so than education”.

“I strongly endorse the key messages of the World Bank’s new education strategy,” Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, said, adding that ,  “ For my country, Nigeria, ‘Learning for All’ is our goal—to ensure that all our children, girls and boys, poor and well-to-do, north and south, can go to a good school and can learn what they need to have successful and happy lives.”