Studying the impact of government's employability enhancement drive <i>Finishing School</i> on tribal students of a college in the South Gujarat region in India

Abstract

We described an exploration of the impact of India's state Gujarat Government's Employability enhancement drive, 'Finishing School' (FS) training on the graduate level tribal college students in Gujarat, India. A literature review on employment skills (ES), vision, mission, and ES set module of FS was used to formulate the tool–Employability Enhancement Measuring Scale (EEMS). Data generation methods include pre and post-tests by EEMS survey questionnaire. SPSS 24 statistical package program was used for data analysis. The values before and after the training were compared using the Paired and Independent samples t-test and descriptive statistics. Results indicated a significant positive effect on tribal students' employability skills. The tool traced what students became by improving upon the ES sets by the end of the 'FS' training. The study's significance lies in the focus on tribal groups, aligning with the state's long-term vision for holistic growth. With a majority of students from the underprivileged Dang Forest area, the research suggested that FS training promoted inclusive growth, contributing to New India @ 75, and supporting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4, 8, 10, and 16. It could be inferred that the experimental group in this study constituted 93% tribal students, many of whom were first-generation learners, making the Gujarat experiment a valuable model for potential adoption in diverse regions globally.

Keywords

• employability skills
• enhancement
• finishing school
• sustainable development
• training