Spending on skills but what are we buying?

Pakistan has one of the youngest populations in the region. We routinely describe this as our demographic dividend. But a young population is not automatically an economic asset. It becomes one only when young people possess skills that somebody is willing to pay for.

TVET in Pakistan is not financed through one neat national budget line. Money flows through the federal government, provincial governments, TVET authorities, development programmes and numerous skills initiatives. That makes simply adding up “the TVET budget” less straightforward than it sounds.

It also illustrates a larger problem.

Pakistan’s skills system is fragmented not only institutionally, but in the way we measure its performance. We know how much money was allocated, how many students enrolled, how many courses were offered and how many certificates were distributed.

But how many graduates got jobs, how long did it take them to find those jobs, what did they earn, how many qualifications were recognized outside Pakistan?

Those numbers matter more than the number of certificates printed.For years, Pakistan’s skills debate has focused heavily on supply.

Train more people.

Open more centres.

Launch more courses.

Increase enrolment.

All of those things can be useful. But none of them, by themselves, constitute success. A training programme with 10,000 graduates and poor employment outcomes is not necessarily more successful than one producing 2,000 graduates whom employers immediately hire. This is where our national conversation on TVET needs to change.

The unit of success should no longer be the trainee. It should be the outcome.

That means employment. Income. Productivity. International portability. Pakistan is not starting from zero. Over the years, considerable work has gone into building a competency-based TVET system.

The National Vocational Qualifications Framework was designed to move technical education away from qualifications based primarily on time spent in classrooms towards qualifications based on demonstrated competence.

That is the right direction.

Pakistan has also invested in accreditation, competency-based curricula, digital information systems and stronger links between training and industry. These reforms matter. But frameworks and systems only become meaningful when they change what happens to the person being trained. The final test must be the labour market.

One of the biggest changes Pakistan can make costs surprisingly little.

Our traditional model is train, certify, look for a job.

Flip it.

Identify demand. Train. Internationally certify. Place.

That sounds like a minor administrative change.

It isn’t. It completely changes the incentives of the skills system. Training providers stop being rewarded primarily for filling classrooms. Curricula begin responding to actual vacancies. Certification becomes connected to employer requirements. And public money begins purchasing economic outcomes rather than training activity.

This becomes even more important when Pakistan looks beyond its borders.