Five key skills to develop in youth

World Youth Skills Day was celebrated in July, a day to highlight the importance of equipping young people with essential skills to adapt and thrive in the modern world.

This date thus underlines the need for governments to invest in educational and training programmes that boost the potential of young people as drivers of change and innovation.

And ultimately, this date takes on even more relevance in a context like the current one, where the global educational level has been affected. This was demonstrated by the average scores obtained during the latest PISA tests, which had an unprecedented drop compared to the previous results of 2018. As for Colombia, the country was even below the average of participating nations, with a score of 411 points in mathematics, 413 points in reading and 408 points in science.

However, you cannot make an impact on academics if you do not work on health and well-being first, especially when children today face internal struggles in which they are constantly seeking to be accepted, to belong and to fit in. As a result, they are stressed and pressured by this, and do not always make the best decisions or consider the dimensions and impact of these decisions.

“Children live in a competitive world where the desire to be the best makes them lose sight of small but invaluable details that have been present in their history for generations. Most likely, if they slowed down their daily lives, they could use the tools that have been provided to them throughout their lives by all those who are part of their support network and who have contributed to their education. This is why, from educational environments, we must take a look back to take advantage of the scaffolding we have and build on those foundations, knowing that the future is not only in our hands, the future is built collaboratively every day,” added Sandra Patricia Martínez, Coordinator of Wellbeing and Learning Support for Early Years and Primary at The English School.

This is why Martínez shared 5 key skills that schools should foster in young people so that they can face today’s challenges in a more successful way:

“Young people are the greatest cultural wealth we can have. We must invest in them, as in children, and respect them and support them closely, but from afar, if that makes sense. We must let them know that we believe in them and that we are there when they need us.”Martinez concluded.

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