The OECD’s Regional Policy Network on Education and Skills aims to foster knowledge exchange in support of national growth and regional integration. The Network encourages a whole-of-government approach to formulating and implementing sound skills policies. It draws on the growing participation by Southeast Asian countries in the OECD’s education surveys and local job creation policy reviews, which provide valuable comparative data and analysis that can help countries in the region build more efficient and effective employment and skills systems.

1. What is the right TVET system ?
Lessons from the Region

2.  Demand for access to postsecondary opportunities is projected to
increase further across South East Asia
Demographic trends -> growing young population in South East Asia
Success in expanding access to primary and secondary education
-> fueling demand for TVET and HE
 ASEAN Economic Community intends to promote free flow of labor
 Governments recognize the need to increase investments in human
capital to further accelerate growth, increase productivity and
innovation and promote competitiveness => growing
investments in TVET
 Growing number of private TVET providers
(business/ management /admin = low cost)

3.  Post-basic education
 Technical and vocational education and training
 Higher education
3
Broad Education Sector
Development
Pre-Primary and
Basic Education
Upper Secondary
Education
Tertiary and
Higher Education
TVET
$255
15% $2
0.1%
$632
36%
$7
0.4%
$864
49%
2012-2014
(US$1,760 million)
ADB Portfolio –
rebalancing towards the world of work
$180
5% $303
8%
$885
25%
$446
13%
$1,716
49%
2015-2017
(US$3,530 million)

4.  Major concern of firms => shortage of workers with the right
skill mix, particularly for jobs in technical and managerial positions
 Companies need to retrain graduates from TVET institutions
 While job-specific technical skills are considered most important
-> more and more companies are also looking for graduates
with cognitive skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking, and
behavioral skills, such as team work and communication.

5. Technological Changes

6. Sector challenges
 low level enterprise involvement => which results in poor relevance of
training courses, and lack of demand-driven standards that guide
program development and assessment procedures
 Limited capabilities of teachers/trainers to adopt modern teaching
techniques integrating theoretical content with practical skills training -
> training mostly theory driven
 Obsolete and inadequate equipment and workshops hamper quality
teaching-learning at many TVET institutions
 Inequities in access to skills training in rural areas
 Limited national skills development strategy to address training and
retraining needs for adults
 Fragmentation of TVET provision & lack of comprehensive information
on provider and financing

7. …. while in the past the focus was on strengthening basic education
Challenge for governments today:
Achieving the right mix of improving quality of and access to TVET -
in addition to further improving basic education and higher education
=> with limited resources

8. TVET does not create jobs
• Overall socio- economic environment and investment planning
needs to be right
TVET needs to be demand-driven
• Planning should not be driven preliminarily by “educationists”
and government officials
• Engagement of the business community is key
TVET for whom
• tension between aligning programs to be responsive to
international standards and requirements of technology driven
labor market --- and needs in the informal and local sector
Quality - not Quantity is the economic driver

9. TVET
Maintaining and
improving TVET
quality under
financial
constraints
Balancing the
expansion of
access to TVET
with greater
attention to equity
Increasing
relevance of
programs at a time
of rapid change in
labor market
needs
Increasing and
better utilizing the
financial
resources
available to TVET

10.  Organizational Structure of the TVET-system
 Getting the organizational structure right is the first step towards
improving efficiency
 TVET institutions need to operate as a system
Efficient coordination mechanisms
 Need for industry engagement at all levels
Finding a balanced intervention & collaboration level for
setting up Quality Frameworks and Accreditation Systems,
validation and assessment procedures, interimship
opportunities …….
 Governance and Management Structures
=> Increasing emphasis on greater autonomy of public
institutions, and decentralization of the TVET system
 Improved management of TVET institutions, entrepreneurial
focus

11. Building differentiated systems :
 Centers of excellence striving towards international
standards
 Institutions with attention to locally relevant skills
promotion of short courses and building pathways
among training providers
 Encourage private TVET provision + PPP models

12. Improving Instructional Quality
 Wanted : teaching staff with solid technical knowledge,
effective teaching and communication skills, hands-on,
practical competence
 Shortage of qualified Instructors/teachers:
rapid TVET expansion - the demand for qualified
teachers/instructors lectures has outstripped the supply
 Need to develop strategies for continuous professional
development considering efficient institutional arrangements
 industry -based teaching and learning
 Improving incentive systems, transparent evaluation
procedures and conditions of employment

13. TVET needs to lead to jobs
=> challenge to link TVET programs to labor market demand
 involvement of employers and business communities is key !
 What is the right balance ?
 growing importance of “behavioral and thinking skills” ;
“analytical, business, and creative skills”
 Entrepreneurial skills –> concern: lack of ‘entrepreneurial
experience’ among teachers
 Efficient labor market information to guide program
development
Relevance of programs

14. TVET is expensive
Challenges to increase efficiency of available resources for public TVET
systems are well understood:
due to funding constraints: reduction of operating costs, increase
student/teach ratio, real value of instructional salaries fall, deferring
maintenance, recruiting less qualified instructors, starving
workshops, inadequate facilities
 Quality suffered
Efficient Spending and Financing of TVET

15. Choices:
 Accept lower quality and continue underfunding public TVET
 Shifting costs of public TVET to students and families
=> at the risk of allowing inequity in access
 Scholarship programs for poor students , Student voucher schemes
 Create income generating opportunities for TVET institutions,
=> concern: supplementary teaching diverts the attention of
teachers away from their regular tasks
 Encourage partnerships with industries/companies
 promote more short courses, build modular systems
Efficient Spending and Financing of TVET

16. Policy areas could include:
(i) strengthening existing policy frames; developing comprehensive implementation
strategies to enhance sector coordination, outlining detailed roles and
responsibilities of TVET stakeholders ;
(ii) developing approaches to foster autonomy of training institutions;
(iii) establishing a comprehensive TVET information system, regular TVET reports;
(iv) establishing procedures to develop/update skill standards in close collaboration
with industry and sector associations;
(v) establishing validation procedures of standards driven by industry partners;
(vi) establishing assessment procedures in partnership with industry;
(vii) developing a concept for practice-oriented pre-service and in-service training of
teachers and trainers at all public training providers and for in-company trainers;
(viii) establishing incentive schemes for teachers, providing promotion pathways between
public training providers, recognition of prior learning;
(ix) establishing a framework for promoting public-private partnerships in TVET;
(x) developing a concept and incentive structure to initiate cooperative training
schemes jointly implemented by companies and training providers;
(xi) creating a seamless educational pathways with multiple entry points that feeds
graduates of TVET institutions into a higher education;
(xii) establishing strategies to enhance short skills training to train and retrain
adults/workers;
(xiv) develop targeted strategies to increase access to TVET provision in
underserved/rural areas.

17. THANK YOU
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www.adb.org/indonesia