Promoting Greater Employability and Embedding Twenty-First Century Skills Amongst Saudi Youth: Analysis and Lessons Learnt from the ‘Yanmu’ Project

Abstract

Whilst the world around us is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, most civic development and education systems, including those in the Gulf Region, are arguably moving in the opposite direction. Pursuing more integrated infrastructure development priorities towards ‘smart cities’ and an increased focus on licensing institutions and teachers is establishing a learning landscape that is just the opposite—fixed, prescriptive, rigid and highly structured. Whilst ‘smart cities’ are intended to support greater personal, organisational and societal productivity and positivity, international benchmarks suggest that we have amongst the lowest comparative metrics in the world within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The contours of the talent landscape are changing rapidly and unfolding before us on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented pace. In many cases, even with current ‘reforms’ underway, our education systems simply cannot keep pace with developments in learning technology alone. It takes at least a decade to realise any benefits of education reform, and it is likely that the changes are already too late by then, as the world of work has changed yet again.

There is a fundamental dichotomy in the way our education system and labour markets function. In the GCC specifically, the much-debated education to employment gap is creating challenges for local talent, as evidenced by persistently high levels of structural unemployment (Punshi et al., Kropf and Ramady (eds), Employability and youth motivation in the Gulf States: The rentier mentality revisited. Gerlach Press, 2016). While most would agree with the challenges we face in education and employment, and the importance of educating youth on having a positive mindset, being grittier or more self-confident, these concepts still seem fuzzy, and most policy-makers, educators, employers, students or parents do not fully understand how to value, teach and develop these skills. Recent developments in positive psychology and positive education have provided the research, impetus and direction to develop interventions for our classrooms and workplaces. Positive psychology provides scientific evidence to prove that our overall happiness, well-being and life success have a lot to do with cultivating our personal strengths and fostering meaningful social relationships, much more than our socioeconomic status, biological makeup, academic achievement and intellect (Dweck, Mindset works, 2017). For the future population in general, such strengths are more relevant during potential periods of lower growth, greater economic uncertainty and increased focus on environmental sustainability going forward. For youth in particular, these strengths and skills impact on critical outcomes such as how they do academically, lower dropout rates in education, better mental health outcomes, more informed career decisions, persistence with job searches and overall happiness and well-being. Incorporating these factors into the built environment of our smart cities of the future is critical to promoting more positivity, productivity and well-being going forward and avoiding the perfect storm of growing populations with low levels of employability, poor health and well-being and continued, critical environmental degradation.

This chapter provides an in-depth case study on ‘Yanmu’ or Saudi Arabia’s National Growth Mindset initiative. The programme was conceptualised to provide youth with the awareness and behavioural change required for work preparedness, employability and life skill development and to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program (NTP). The programme also helped establish a strong partnership between the public, private, and third sectors, and is supported by the Ministry of Education and Alwaleed Philanthropies, delivered by Injaz Saudi Arabia, Dimam and The Talent Enterprise. Yanmu was successfully piloted in 10 schools in Riyadh and Jeddah, with 600 students in November and December, and this chapter will discuss the design and deployment of the programme, as well as the research outcomes from a thorough programme evaluation. The programme was  expected to scale up to cover 1,000 schools and 60,000 students by 2020. Using a variety of interactive learning pedagogical approaches, including animated videos, group activities and personal reflection, the Yanmu programme focuses on providing youth with the tools and resources they need to build essential skills for life and to foster longer-term behavioural and attitudinal change. Our impact research has clearly established that focusing on fostering twenty-first-century skills and strengths in youth from programmes such as these is not only the ‘right’ thing to do for policy-makers, educators, employers and parents, but the ‘smart’ thing to do. We saw a significant difference in the achievement across all programme outcomes, including pre- and post-self-report measures on all indicators of career awareness, work preparedness, increased self-confidence, shift from a fixed to growth mindset, grit and resilience.