Human capital development is the highest priority for the 2nd term of President Jokowi’s Government.
To build Indonesia’s skills the President has placed a particular focus on technical vocational education and training (TVET). The emphasis is on creating work-ready graduates through vocational education & certification and matching vocational schools education with industry-relevant skills.
Sustainable Skills has been working with several Indonesian Ministry’s responsible for managing the TVET system with a focus on building the skills and knowledge of the Ministry’s so they can better understand how to develop an industry engaged system.
With this in mind it was a pleasure to be invited to speak at the 1st Indonesia Vocational Education and Training Summit 2019 (IVETS) held on the 9th and 10th October in Jakarta.
I was asked to speak on the work Sustainable Skills has been doing with the Ministry of Research Technology and Higher Education (MoRTHE) to create Indonesia’s National TVET Centre of Excellence (CoE). These CoE’s will be established at leading Universities responsible for preparing students to be TVET teachers at High Schools (SMK).
The design of a ‘World Class’ Centre of Excellence is based on pursuing five key objectives to enable the CoE’s to lead and support reform of the national TVET system:
Objective 1: Drive Indonesia’s TVET reform agenda
- As a capacity builder of TVET teachers for SMKs, the CoE should be a driver of Indonesia’s TVET reform agenda.
- The CoE should provide research, policy advice and operational standards to stakeholders and government to promote ‘best practice’ vocational training and management of the TVET system.
- The CoE’s influence in policy making will be maximised by remaining current with industry needs and skills advancement, supporting national development of contemporary skills.
Objective 2: Industry led competency-based training system
- Industry led, competency-based training ensures industry standards and delivers “job-ready” results, supports world best practice standards and allows regular reviews to adjust for new technologies and business needs.
- Competency standards are specific requirements of the job or tasks required for the workplace that ensures students are able to do what is expected of them from industry, business and the community.
Objective 3: Quality training and assessment
- Effective assessment is a key to quality outcomes. Quality training and assessment is underpinned by consultation with industry. Assessment processes must ensure people who are trained have the skills industry needs.
- Because there are many journeys students can take to reach their destination, training and assessment needs to be flexible and responsive. Modular course design is a key to that flexibility.
Objective 4: Teacher professional development
- Teachers of vocational education must have practical experience of the skills they teach.
- Assessment of teachers and students against workplace competency standards must be performed by competent and capable teachers with effective industry engagement.
The CoE’s will be driven by industry collaboration in six areas
- Research and policy
- TVET teacher capability building
- Training and assessment
- Competency standards and course development
- Training infrastructure
- Continuous improvement
Sustainable Skills has been working in Indonesia for 3 years, largely because of the scale of the opportunity for Indonesian people. In our experience, there is no doubt whatsoever that a focus on Industry engaged TVET is a fundamental plank in meeting the Presidents objective to significantly develop Indonesia’s human capital and productivity