Boosting Vocational School Performance

Media Indonesia, page 7

The Government through the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) continues to boost the performance of vocational education or vocational high school (SMK). Their hope is SMK could turn out the next generation of educated, trained, and ready to work in the corporate world and the industrial world (DUDI).

To achieve that goal, Kemendikbud focuses on three main targets. The target is so SMKs could meet the quality standards that include teachers, facilities, and learning activities; expertise and student competence programs according to the needs of industry; and at least 80% of SMK graduates could be absorbed in the corporate world and the industrial world (DUDI) or self-employed in the first year.

In the fulfillment of quality standards, the Directorate of SMK Guidance Dikdasmen Kemendikbud subdivides into four categories, namely institutional quality, the quality of teaching staff, the quality of the learning process, and the quality of graduates.  Institutional quality includes the governance of schools, school facilities, cooperation with industry, and structure of the curriculum that refers to the needs of industry.

Director General of Primary and Secondary Education (Dikdasmen) Kemendikbud Hamid Muhammad said school governance should be able to balance between what is owned and what is the necessity. For example, the management of school operational funds (BOS) in a transparent manner, management of public contributions for development of quality, and planning of quality differentiation.

About the quality of teachers, Kemendikbud seeks to make the ratio of productive teachers to be 60% and normative adaptive teachers to be 40%. Achievement of these ratios is done by recruiting personnel/manpower from industry as part of the teaching staff in the schools. The teachers are also invited to industry in order to understand the latest developments so that what are taught correspond to the needs of the job.

The target of productive teachers in the next three years is to reach 91 thousand people. To meet it, a double skills education is conducted for adaptive normative teachers to become productive teachers.   The dual skills program has turned out 12,600 productive teachers plus 15 thousand productive teachers this year. Currently, there are about 300 thousand SMK teachers.

SMK learning process in future should be based on the needs and progress of industry. Each school is given freedom of expression provided it is in line with the curriculum which is filled with productive learning 5 hours per week. Implementation of the learning process is no longer in the form of simulation, but directly with the realization of products and services.  For example, hospitality SMK builds a hotel to train the students directly through learning in school and practice or internship in the hotel.

In addition, strengthening of vocational graduates is also through the national exam and a competency test which are synchronized with the certification body. Thus, graduates of SMK hold competency certificates recognized by the National Board of Professional Standards (BNSP) so that many are absorbed in DUDI.