Focus on employment-oriented education: World Bank

The World Bank on Monday urged countries across the globe to focus more on education that prepares young people for the jobs market rather than on the time they spend in school.

Better learning for all students worldwide is vital because economic growth, better development, and significantly less poverty depend on the knowledge and skills that people gain, not the years spent in a classroom, it said while launching its education strategy for the next decade.

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).

There are over 210 million people out-of-work globally, with employers reporting too few workers to hire with the right skills.

It said the global conditions were changing rapidly with a surge of young people at the secondary and tertiary levels in the Middle East and many emerging economies and the rise of new middle-income countries anxious to boost their economic competitiveness by training more skilled, adaptable workforces.

"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," said the World Bank President Robert B Zoellick.