How Does the Short-Term Training Program Contribute to Skills Development in Bangladesh?

Abstract

Skills development is one of the
 priorities for national economic development strategies of
 Bangladesh. The vision 2021 of the Government of Bangladesh
 gives the highest priority to building a large base of
 skilled workers in order to achieve a poverty-free
 middle-income country by 2021. The skills development sector
 is highly complex due to multiple service providers, a vast
 spectrum of target audiences, a large range in modalities of
 service provision, and varied emphases in terms of skills
 levels and types. The short-term training, a formal channel
 of six months training, is an important instrument for
 bridging the gap between the needs of the labor market for
 increasing the pool of skillful workers and the aspiration
 of the students for finding a good job. In order to assess
 the performance of short-term training and interventions by
 Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP), a tracer
 study was conducted between December 2013 and January 2014.
 Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP) is jointly
 financed by the World Bank, Canada and the Government of
 Bangladesh (GoB), which started in 2010 for contributing to
 Bangladesh’s medium to long-term objective of developing its
 human resources as a cornerstone of its strategy for poverty
 alleviation and economic growth. It supports competitively
 selected 42 public and 8 private short-term training
 institutions for improving the quality of training and
 providing opportunities to the disadvantaged youth for
 obtaining skills from the select training providers.