India’s Youth at a Crossroads: The School-to-Work Transition Challenge
Author – Samruddhi Gole
India’s school-to-work transition crisis is driven by a failure to build the cultural, structural, and institutional conditions to translate policy into practice. Despite strong policy frameworks like the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Skill Quality Framework (NSQF), successful implementation on-ground remains a distant dream subsequently leaving millions of educated youth unemployed, underemployed, or NEET (not in education, employment or training), with cascading consequences for women and low-income groups.
The Context
We all want a job that is meaningful, enjoyable and well paid. But opportunities for these kinds of jobs are scarce. 267 million young people aged 15 to 24 across the world are not studying, not working, and not receiving any training. In many developing countries, there is a mismatch between vocational education and the skills that the labour market actually needs. India is no exception. Only 8.25% of graduates work in jobs that match their qualifications. Almost half end up in low-skill jobs that do not require a degree. This is an urgent wake up call to India’s education and skilling system.
Think about how much the world of work has changed in the last decade alone. Automation is replacing factory jobs, green energy is creating new ones, and digital skills are required almost everywhere. Vocational training needs to prepare young people for this new reality. But in most developing countries, it is not keeping pace. Teachers lack support, learners face difficulties, and providers have little motivation to improve. Issues of access, fairness, quality, and relevance continue to hold the system back.
India is facing a unique paradox; there is an expansion of higher education, but less employment generation. The group most likely to be unemployed at scale and severity are graduates, not school dropouts. This indicates a clear skill gap that requires urgent attention to keep the workforce up to date with international benchmarks. The unemployment rate among graduates is 13%. Specifically, only 42.6% of Indian graduates were deemed employable in 2024, a decline from 51.25% in 2023, showing a persistent disconnect between academic output and industry requirements.
Why It Matters?
The school-to-work transition is a turning point in young people’s lives. It impacts future employment, social connectedness, and the well-being of youth. In many developing nations, young people make up a significant portion of the population. When they enter the workforce, access to productive and decent work can enable them to contribute to the financial sustainability and the development of their communities. On the other hand, when economic opportunities are scarce, youth tend to remain NEET for a long time and experience frustration. Being NEET for 6 months results in a ‘wage scar’ of 8% by age 30.
India accounts for 25 % NEET youth in 2024, against the global average of 20%. Among many other reasons, limited job creation, uneven quality of education and vocational training, and persistent disparities have contributed to young people disengaging from the labour market.
India’s high NEET rate is largely driven by young women. They are far more likely than young men to be outside education and the labour market, with rates nearly five times higher (48.4% vs 9.8%) than the global average. The gender gap in labour force participation stems from a combination of factors, primarily restrictive social norms alongside a lack of suitable jobs. This shows long-term implications for equitable and sustainable economic growth.
Figure 1.
A consistent pattern is observable across global economies. As national income declines, formal wage employment contracts and the share of workers in stable, salaried positions diminish correspondingly. In its place, own-account work, defined as self-employment without hired labour, rises as a survivalist response to the absence of formal job opportunities. According to the ILO, informal employment remains the dominant form of work globally. Own-account workers represent the single largest share of all informally employed persons. Paradoxically, this proliferation of own-account work does not appear to contribute to the change in national income. The substantial productivity gap between formal and informal work in developing economies suggests that labour forces dominated by own-account workers generate considerably less economic value per worker, a structural constraint that keeps countries anchored in low or lower-middle income status rather than enabling transition to upper-middle or high-income classification.
Skill to Work Transition at Policy Level
School-to-work transition is a process that enables young people aged 15−24 to move easily from initial education to productive and decent work. Two processes are salient to this definition: (i) the process of preparing young people for the transition; (ii) the process of making the actual transition. School-to-work transition is embedded within an integrated lifelong learning and employability framework. This framework covers getting children off to the right start to facilitate labour mobility and advancement in productive and decent employment. UNICEF has provided a Lifelong Learning and Employability Framework (see below). In India, Lend a Hand India influences a foundational phase by providing a skills foundation for adolescent school-going children. This is called the sensitive developmental stage, but intervening and tracking this STW transition needs support and collaboration.
To secure, train and thrive in work, young people need to develop a mix of foundational, transferable, technical and vocational skills. Several structural drivers influence the transition from subsistence or own-account work to stable wage employment, including the alignment between skills in demand and skills provided, as well as the broader availability of formal employment opportunities.
Figure 2. Lifelong learning and employability framework (UNICEF), adapted from the World Bank’s Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) framework
In the Indian context, vocational training falls under the mandate of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), alongside a wide range of authorities and agencies operating at both the national and state levels. The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) represents a significant policy shift in this regard. Unlike the National Policy on Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015 (NPSDE 2015), which required only a limited proportion of institutions to offer vocational education, NEP 2020 envisions its integration across all schools and colleges. The policy mandates vocational exposure from Grade 6 onwards, the provision of courses aligned to the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) Levels 1–4 during secondary school, and progression to NSQF Level 4.5 and beyond at higher education level. In doing so, NEP 2020 signals a fundamental transition from Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) as a provision for a select few to skilling as a universal entitlement for every learner.
Conclusion
Without the successful on-ground implementation, a policy remains just a well-drafted document. The strategies adopted at the international level and proven effective are a distant dream for many low and middle-income countries. Participation of youth in technical and vocational training in India remains ~2.8%, posing an urgent call for action. India does not lack in its approach to school-to-work transition. What it lacks are the enabling conditions, like cultural, structural, and institutional, that allow ambition to become an outcome. Reforming this transition requires three parallel efforts. Aligning curriculum and skill delivery with actual labour market demand, addressing the deep gender disparities that keep nearly half of young women outside education and work, and building the institutional capacity that converts national frameworks like NSQF into real opportunities for every learner. India’s demographic dividend will only materialise if the transition from school-to-work becomes a supported, equitable, and skills-grounded journey, and not a gap that youth must navigate alone.