TVET Malaysia

2nd International TT-TVET EU-Asia-Link project Meeting, VEDC Malang

Technical & Vocational Education & Training (TVET) from Malaysia Perspective

by

Prof. Dr. Jailani Bin Md. Yunos,

Assoc.Prof.Dr.Wan Mohd Rashid Bin. Wan Ahmad,

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Noraini Binti Kaprawi,

Assoc.Prof.Dr.Wahid Bin Razally

Kolej Universiti Teknologi Tun Hussein Onn

(KUiTTHO), Malaysia.

Introduction

Malaysia economic grew at an average 6.2 percent per annum during the 1991-2005

period as in Ninth Malaysia Plan. Malaysia now at the mid-points in its journey towards 2020 and

is just transforming to the second fifteen year phase. Everything in the world now in the rapid

change of technological development and most of the work need to operate globally. For example

local businesses competing with multinationals and businesses need to think globally in order to

promote their product. Due to the changes, there have an impact in the nature of work where

highly using of the technology to compete on global arena and it redefines time and location of

work

Another aspect that will change because of the technology development is the working

environment with a global workforce and this will be related to the implications on human capital.

A more flexible workforce with advanced technical skills coupled with well developed generic

skills such as creative thinking, problem solving and analytical skills among others is highly

needed from the employer in the industry in order to meet the challenges faced by businesses.

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Global economic competition increase and give an impact to the economic growth and

emphasis to produce high quality products. Core economic success for 21st century of economies

has drawn from high quality products and high quality values added all over the world. Similarly,

an improvement participation of national education in Malaysia also increases with significant

level at pre-school and tertiary-level. Furthermore, in order to improve the teaching skills and the

utilizations of ICT in schools, various measures have been taken to review the curriculum. It is

also being highlighted in Ninth Malaysia Plan that an opportunities and skill enhancement and

lifelong learning also expanded through the establishment the community colleges and open

universities.

During 1991-2005 in Ninth Malaysia Plan, a number of 597,384 skilled workers are

produced by training institution and 4.8 million places are provided by Pembangunan Sumber

Manusia Berhad to upgrading the workers skill and to meet the demand for skilled human

resources. Nowadays employers want to recruit multi-skilled (academic skills, teamwork skills,

and personal management skills) with leadership qualities and functional knowledgeable.

Besides, the workers should be creative and innovative and knowledgeable in using the ICT.

Thus in education, it is important for us to develop our labour force towards requirements and

needs in the industries. However the education institution and training institution need to have

working relationship with the industry in order to meet better needs of employers. Therefore with

this good relationship, the developing processes for the labour force align with the needs from the

employers.

Overview of Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Vocational education first appeared in the Malaysian education in 1897 when the British

initiated the training for Malay youths as mechanics and fitters to manage the railway lines in

Malaya (Federation of Malaysia, 1956; Zakaria, 1988). In 1906 the first public technical school

was opened to train technicians for government sectors (Lourdesamy, 1972). The comprehensive

education and training was introduced in 1965 and this gives an impact to the vocational

education scenario.

The development of education in Malaysia change due to the changes in economic,

social, number of population, technology and the needs of the education development itself. In

the table from Economic Planning Unit (2006) in Ninth Malaysia Plan, there are levels of

education regarding to the technical and vocational education and training in Malaysia. Education

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phase in Malaysia begin with the pre-school, primary school, secondary school, Post-secondary

(Certificates), university level for diploma, degree, masters and PhD (Refer Table 1). There has

an increase number expected for teacher education in year 2010 from 34,672 teachers to 45,899

teachers. We can also see that, the number of students expected in 2010 also rise for the upper

secondary level at Mara Junior Sciences Colleges and Government and Government aided

Schools (Technical and Vocational) from 12,145 students to 21,470 students and 72,827 students

to 85,227 students.

Table 1: Student Enrolement In Public Education Institutions, 2000-2010

Source: Ministry of Education (EPU, 2006), Ninth Malaysia Plan

Technical Education Schools in Malaysia is a post-PMR course for 2 years at the

Technical Secondary schools. It is aiming to sit for the SPM examination at the end of course.

Among the courses offered are Mechanical Engineering Studies, Civil Engineering Studies,

Electrical Engineering Studies, Agriculture and Commerce.

Vocational Education Schools is the school where the student is studying vocation skill. It

is a post-PMR course for 2 years at Technical Secondary Schools. It is also aiming to sit for the

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SPM examination at the end of course. Vocational Education Schools has 5 fields to be offered,

and among the courses offered are (Table 2):

Table 2: Courses Offered at the Vocational Education Schools

Field of Engineering Craftsmanship

Field of Home Economics

Field of Commerce

Field of Agriculture

Farm Machinery

• Electricity

• Electronics

• Machine Workshop Practices

• Metal Welding and Fabrication

• Automation

• Construction of Buildings

• Air-Conditioning

• Catering and Preparation of Food

• Fashion Designing and Clothes-making

• Cosmetics • Child-care • Bakery and

Confectionery

• Business Management

• Decorative Horticulture

• Farm Management

The formation of Polytechnic Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) was aimed at

providing skilled semi-professionals in engineering, commercial and hospitality at Diploma and

Certificate levels to meet the nation’s demand both in the public and private sectors. To date

there are 20 Polytechnics MoHE operating nationwide.

Intake into Polytechnic MoHE is twice yearly. At each intake, Polytechnic MoHE offers

20,000 places of study for SPM/SPM(V)/MCE holders, Polytechnic and Community College

MoHE certificate.

Polytechnic MoHE offers 24 Certificate courses and 40 Diploma courses in various

disciplines. It also offers courses for the special needs. To date, there are 59,000 students

currently studying in Polytechnics MoHE nationwide. As stated in Table 3 is the duration of the

programme offered in the Polytechnic MoHE. At the certificate level, the duration taken for the

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programme is four semesters, while the diploma programme is six semesters. Instead of that, for

the Diploma in Secretarial Science the duration taken is four semesters and Diploma in Shipping

Engineering is seven semesters. For the duration for post certificate in Polytechnic is two

semesters while the post certificate in Community College is three semesters including one-

semester for Bridging Programme.

Table 3 : Duration of Programme Offered in the Polytechnic MoHE.

Source: Ministry of Education (EPU, 2006), Ninth Malaysia Plan

Bil Programme Duration 1 Certificate. Four Semesters. 6 Diploma. Six Semesters. 2 Diploma in Secretarial Science. Four Semesters. 3 Diploma in Shipping Engineering Seven Semesters. 4 Post Certificate (Polytechnic) Two Semesters

5 Post Certificate (Community College) Three Semesters (including a One-Semester Bridging Programme).

Malaysia has public education sector and private education sector. According to

Economic Planning Unit in Ninth Malaysia Plan 2006, the number of public education increases to

the large number from 22 institutions in year 2000 to 71 institutions in year 2005. The institution

includes universities, university colleges, polytechnics and community colleges (Refer Table 4). Table 4: Tertiary Education Institutions, 2000 & 2005

Source: Ministry of Higher Education (EPU, 2006), Ninth Malaysia Plan

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According to Table 5, the number of students participating in the certificate level, diploma

level, degree level, master level and PhD level also increase from year to year according to

needs of education itself and people now more focus to the technical and vocational education

scenario of study. It is expected that, by 2006 until 2010, the percentage of enrolment at Master

Degree level will be increase from 7.5 % up to 26.5 % in Public Tertiary Education Levels. In

addition of that, at the PhD level, the enrolment percentage also is expected to be up to 26%.

Table 5: Enrolment In Tertiary Education Institutions By Levels Of Study, 2000-2010


In Malaysia, the quality of the nation’s human capital will be the most critical element in

the achievement of the National Mission. It is believe that, the human capital development will be

a key thrust in the Ninth Plan period in Malaysia. Due to that, the best way in developing the key

thrust is by the expenditure allocation for education and training. By referring Table 6, the tertiary

education is having up to RM 16069 Million expenditure allocation. For teacher education itself it

has RM 577.7 Million allocation. The technical and vocational government schools were allocated

about RM 629.2 Million for their development expenditure. This expenditure allocation figure

shows that a huge development will be carried out in the ninth plan period to produce better

quality of the nation’s human capital.

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Table 6: Development Expenditure Allocation For Education And Training, 2001-2010 (RM Million)


Employment Circumstances in Malaysia

The graduates employment becomes more competitive nowadays. It has been an issue

now where the current graduates now do not match the needs of the industries. Kamal Khir

(2006) said that Graduates now are lacking in both technical know-how and generic skills.

Competence is the fusion of both domain specific knowledge and generic skills, so efforts to

increase graduates’ competence must cover both areas. The competence needs to be learnt in

the environment and context that they are to be used and to demonstrate application of the

knowledge or skill. There are a number of competencies and they are usually defined by the

clusters and not in isolation. The field of training and development has undergone changes that

reflect the dynamics factors in the world economy. In training and development perspective, there

are an increasing scope of training and development to stay competitive in today’s global

economy (Zane Berge et al, 2002). As Malaysia is aiming to be a developed economy country,

the needs on certain competency may vary in term of the usefulness for the teacher, trainer or

coach.

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The life or sustainability of a particular competency, may differ as the work requirement

changes. Continual research into these competencies is therefore an important issue in the

training of TVET teachers and instructors. Foresighting and refining the competencies cluster

required enable us to identify the criticality of each competency.

A list of competencies in Table 7 was gathered from literature reviews. Broad clusters of

skills, knowledge, and attitudes were grouped together.

Table 7: Critical Competency Groups Suggested for Graduates Main Competency Groups

Skills

Subject Matter Ability to have technical subject matter understanding Ability on content analysis Ability to have technical skills and knowledge Ability to understands the knowledge and skills requirements of jobs,tasks, roles

Practicum Industrial experience Teaching experience Competent in his own specialisation

Research Skills Ability to have research culture Ability to understands the research concepts and theories Ability to research to find the necessary sources/ information. Ability to critically evaluate information sources for reliability Ability to critically reading of literature Ability to applies fundamental research skills to instructional design project Ability to have problem solving through research Ability to do research proposal Ability to do project development Ability to manage research Having the knowledge of the principles of qualitative research including in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis Ability to interpret the results from qualitative research including in-depth interviews, focus groups and and content analysis Ability to interpret statistical results to reach logical conclusions Ability to interpret qualitative information to reach logical conclusions

Generic Skills Ability to understand cross culture Ability to communicate effectively in visual, oral and visual form Facilitates implementation of team-based processes Ability to create networking Ability to identify and resolve ethical and legal implication of design in the worplace. Having the knowledge of Interpersonal relationship skills Ability to handle conflict

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Ability to develops and sustains social competences Ability to provides leadership intradepartmentally and interdepartmentally. Having the knowledge of negotiation skills. Ability to demonstrates effective writing skills and techniques. Ability to exercise judgment and critical thinking about data and result. Ability to be innovative. Ability to think critically when making decisions and solving problems. Having the knowledge of the management skills Ability to demonstrates effective questioning skills and techniques. Knowledge of entepreunership skills

Organisational

Management

Having the knowledge of human resources development theories and practices Ability to have commitment to HRD principles and practices Having the knowledge on industrial psychology Ability to demonstrates effective presentation and platform skills Ability to manages the learning environment Having the knowledge of professionalisme Having the knowledge of trust and integrity Having the knowledge of ethical Having the knowledge of the concepts of objectivity in an organisation Having the knowledge of the concepts of philosophy in an organisation Ability to determine development needs of employee population Ability to develop curiculum to meet organisation need Ability to manage information Ability to manage workshop / laboratory Knowledge on quality in an organisation

Instruction Having the knowledge of learning theories and practices Ability to delivers the training programs Ability to designs and implements training for specific learners Ability to designs, develops and produces instructional materials Ability to select and uses a variety of techniques for determining and sequencing instructional content and strategies Ability to utilizes performance based tools(just-in-time training, organizational development tools, expert systems) Ability to conducts skills inventories Ability to understands how to improve performance in situations where training and instruction are inappropriate Ability to performs job, task and/or content analysis Ability to analyzes learning situations using appropriate needs assesment, task, learner and environmental analyses Ability to facilitates the diagnosis of problems Ability to have effetive use of interactive media skills to deliver instruction and engage learners Ability to selects and utilizes appropriate technologies for instruction delivery

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As noted by Kamal Khair (2006), that lack of these competencies lead to a new issue for

the graduates becoming unemployed. Table 8 shows that in 2005, there are about 3.5 %

graduates are on unemployment. It can also be seen that, in 2005, 28.7 % of the labour force is in

the manufacturing sector. This followed by Wholesale and Retail Trade, Hotels and Restaurants

17.7 % and Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock & Fishing 12.7%. As we can see, all these sectors are

the sectors that are related to the technical and vocational education. These demanding situation

has a contribution to a need where a better labour force should be produced by the technical and

vocational education and training system in Malaysia. In Table 9, the demand in 2010 for

Technicians and Associate Professional occupational group is 13.2 % which include non-

graduate teachers, supervisors and engineering and computer support technicians. While the

demand for the Professionals occupational group is 6.5%. Related to this, the demand for Plant

and Machine Operators and Assemblers in 2010 is 13.6%.

Table 8: Employment by Sector, 2000-2010 (‘000 Persons)

Source: Economic Planning Unit 2006, Ninth Malaysia Plan

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Table 9 : Employment by Major Occupational Group, 2000-2010 (‘000 Persons)

Needs in Technical and Vocational Education and Training System in Malaysia

As a middle income country, Malaysia economy is an investment-economic growth. It will

concentrate on the manufacturing and the outsourcers service export. It will have production of

high value-added goods and services. The technology driven in Malaysia is imported

technologies. The competition based mainly on efficiency in producing standard products. High

quality is technology advanced, and the flexible production becomes more important, but the

technology and design is largely still imported.

The challenges in this investment-economic growth are to attract foreign direct

investment and to link the national economy with the international production systems and the

global economy. Due to these challenges, a universal secondary education, deepening on

vocational and technical education, particularly at post secondary technician levels should be

arranged. It is also needed to up-skill the labour force through life-long learning to retool and

update skills. The broaden skills require is also including teamwork, communications and

problem-solving (Schwab et al., 2002).

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Mustapha et al. (2001) indicated that Malaysia was short of skilled workers to meet the

demands of economic growth. In the industrial sectors, the ratio is one engineer to three

technicians to 20 operators (1:3:20) (Asian Development Bank Report, 1999). However, with the

recent development in new technologies and the need for workers with intensive knowledge and

high skills, the demand for the workforce structure has changed. The ratio is one engineer to five

technicians to twelve operators (1:5:12). According to Asian Development Bank (2004),

developing countries are not ready to move towards becoming a knowledge-based economy if

the numbers of low skilled workers are large. Economic growth at this stage witnesses an

acceleration of demand for skills particularly at the higher levels, technicians and above and a

corresponding decline in demand for unskilled or low-skilled production workers and craftsman

(Figure 1).

Figure 1: Economic Labour Force for Industrializing Economy. Source: Asian Development Bank (2004).Improving Technical Education and Vocational Training Strategies for Asia This transformation is also been supported by Wan Seman (2005) that indicated the

number of semiskilled, skilled and highly skilled or multiskilled worker should be increased (Figure

2). The transitional phase towards Vision 2020 is the phase to transform the developing

economy of Malaysia becoming developed economy with high-quality skilled workers to support

the industrializing economy. This conclude a high demand for TVET system in Malaysia.

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27 July 2006 Hu ma n Re sources Polic y D ivision, M HR Ma laysia

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M alaysian W orkforce Transform ation

Technologist(23% )

H ighly Skille d/M u lti-skilled

Skille d

Se m iskilled (23% )

U nskille d Wo r

kers

to

Pr o

fess

i ona

ls

V IS IO N 20 20D eveloping

Econom yD eveloped Econom y(60% + Skilled W orkers)

20201975

So urce : Mr. Rein h ard t Sach s, Germ an Co n su ltan t fo r Care er & Tech n ical Ed u ca tio n

T ra nsitio nal P hase

Skill Vacuum

-

Figure 2: Malaysian Workforce Transformation Source: Wan Seman Wan Ahmad (2005). The New Sectors of Economic Growth: The Contributing Role of Technical and Vocational Education. Paper presented at National Technical & Vocational Education Conference, 11-12 January 2005, Crown Princess Hotel, K.L.

References:

Economic Planning Unit (2006), Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Asian Development Bank (2004).Improving Technical Education and Vocational Training Strategies for Asia , http://www.adb.org/Publications.

Md Jaffar Abdul Carrim (2006), ‘Training employable graduates: innovation in training

methodology’. Paper presented at National Conference on Continuing Technical Education & Training 2006, Challenges in Technical Education and Training: Enhancing Employability among Graduates 28-29 July 2006, The Katerina Hotel, Batu Pahat Johor

Kamal Khir (2006), Training Approach for the Employability of Graduates: Critical Graduate

Competencies in the Changing World, Paper presented at National Conference on Continuing Technical Education & Training 2006, Challenges in Technical Education and Training: Enhancing Employability among Graduates 28-29 July 2006, The Katerina Hotel, Batu Pahat Johor

Kandan Saikon (2006), “Marketable Curriculum in Technical Training”, Paper presented at

National Conference on Continuing Technical Education & Training 2006, Challenges in Technical Education and Training: Enhancing Employability among Graduates 28-29 July 2006, The Katerina Hotel, Batu Pahat Johor

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Schwab, Klaus, Michael Porter and Jeffrey Sachs, eds. 2002. The Global Competitiveness

Report, 2001-2002. Geneva: The World Economic Forum Zakaria Kasa and Ab. Rahim Bakar (2006), Vocational and Technical Education and Career

Development: Malaysian Perspectives. Zakaria, A. (1988). Perceptions of industrial training and employability skills: A comparative study

of the vocational schools and the MARA vocational institutes students in Malaysia. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

http://www.moe.gov.my/tayang.php?laman=sek_teknik&bhs=en

http://www.moe.gov.my/tayang.php?laman=sek_vokasional&bhs=en

http://www.politeknik.edu.my/webjan06/02_english/ http://www.unikl.edu.my/unikl/eng/ctl_overview.php www.emoe.gov.my www.emohr.gov.my

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