High population growth has given rise to a young dependent population and increased unemployment among the youth. The average years of schooling of labor force (3¼ years) remains quite low making it difficult to impart new skills to the burgeoning labour force. Raising this by 1½-2 years could have raised real per capita economic growth rate by about ½ percentage points per year.
Investment in higher education, science and research, vocational and technical education, female education thus should be the highest priority for the next ten years. This can only be achieved if there is a strong public-private-community partnership in the governance and provisioning of education and health.