TVET the latest buzzword in education
I AM really happy to learn that the government has woken up to the importance of technical and vocational education training (TVET) as Malaysia moves towards a knowledge-based economy.
Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran hit the nail on the head when he said TVET ought to be the preferred choice among students and parents.
His directive for technical and vocational institutes to conduct night classes is also laudable. This would allow more working adults to upgrade their skills which they couldn’t do previously because of their commitments at work.
With the after-office hours classes, working adults would be able to not just pick up skills related to their career but also learn new ones. This would help them to transition to new career paths more easily and enhance their personal value in the job market.
The government’s recent decision to relax the admission requirement for orang asli into public TVET institutions would also help to empower the community to break free from the poverty cycle, and is a positive step towards a more inclusive society.
Malaysia’s first TVET institution was set up in Kuala Lumpur in 1962. However, our education system and culture have favoured the academic stream. Being Asians, parents encourage their children to become professionals like doctors, lawyers and accountants. At the same time, blue-collar professions are considered lowly paid, dangerous and sometimes degrading.
But times have changed. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its recently released Employment Outlook 2019 report, says that the workplace landscape is changing rapidly. Almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation.
This trend will only intensify in the years to come as globalisation, automation and Industrial Revolution 4.0 gather steam. We are on the cusp of a technological revolution that will see employment rules being rewritten like never before.
Today, doctors are seeing their roles being slowly taken over by cutting-edge medical laboratories; accountants have to contend with the plethora of widely available and cheaper accounting software; and even bankers are facing stiff challenges from innovative products like peer-to-peer lending. Unless workers possess technical foundations and keep up with the latest technological breakthrough, they may be rendered redundant.
Kulasegaran has done the right thing by pushing for TVET, just as technological giants like Germany, Japan and Korea have. Students in these countries spend about 70% of their time on hands-on training and the remainder on academic pursuits.
Armed with the technical and vocational skills acquired in schools and training institutes, school-leavers in those countries have little problem landing jobs. In contrast, Malaysia is saddled with the problem of unemployed graduates.
JOSHUA LIEW Ujong Pasir, Melaka