Skills Training and Vocational Education in Malaysia

Abstract

Skills gap threaten Malaysia’s future economic growth and productivity. This chapter discusses about the challenges of vocational education and skills training in Malaysia. Even though a number of initiatives have been implemented by the government to reduce the skills gap, the negative perception of the public towards vocational education and skills training continues. Plans to lessen the skills gap include short-term strategies such as innovative training models and medium- and long-term strategies such as significant rethinking of collaborative partnerships between training organisations and industry to provide more flexible workplace delivery. The role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is crucial since one way to alleviate graduate unemployment is to retrain the jobless graduates to learn new vocational skills. The crux of the problem with the Malaysian TVET system is that it is school-based. Vocational school teachers themselves often lack industrial experience. Malaysia’s TVET system also has other challenges, including multiple certification and quality assurance systems, limited access to vocational education for students with special needs and minority groups, lack of skilful vocational teachers, limited pathway for tertiary vocational education and minimal involvement by the industry. In addition, there is no single oversight body to coordinate the TVET system in Malaysia.