“Machines to do more work”, CISCE advise schools to train students on new challenges

Mita Mukherjee

The chief executive of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) advised schools to start training students to develop the skills that will be required to face new challenges when, in the years to come, machines will do more work than humans.  

Citing a report of the World Economic Forum, Joseph Emmanuel the CISCE chief executive and secretary said, as of now half of the jobs are handled by machines. Schools need to be mindful about the job requirements “of tomorrow” as the gap is increasing.

“By the year 2037, sixty per cent of the jobs will be handled by machines. Humans will be left with 40 per cent. I am not saying this. This is the report of the World Economic Forum. As of now it is almost  50: 50. The gap is increasing. So we need to train our students to meet the challenges. They will have to compete with machines … they will have to be relevant with the changing time…” Emmanuel said, speaking to heads of schools from Bengal and Northeast on “National Education Policy — Way Forward the CISCE schools at The Heritage School in Kolkata.

Emmanuel said that after Covid, three new trends were noticed including “working from home or work away from work places, large involvement of technology and replacement of technology against human interventions.”

Considering the new trends and to enable students to train them about requirements of the changing time, the schools will have to ensure that they make their students clear about the concepts they teach in the classrooms.

He said it is important that every child is made clear about the concepts they are taught and that is why the council introduced competency-based and critical thinking questions in the board examinations.

He also urged schools to be cautious about the impact of digitization on students’ creativity.

“In times of digitization, creativity is an area where the monopoly of the humans remains intact. The future of those who are very creative is bright in the days to come because this is one area where Artificial Intelligence cannot get into. Creativity and imagination are the areas to be very demanding in the days to come,” Emmanuel said.

The CISCE chairman G. Immanuel also attended the meeting.

Also read: CISCE urges foreign universities to give weightage to ISC students to skip semesters