Vocationalizing Education: The Dangers of Link-And-Match Paradigm
5.2 Vocational School in Indonesia: Technicizing Education, Perpetuating Inequity
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Indonesia’s education system implement competency-based curriculum which overly emphasized work-related skills in preference for conceptual engagement and critical thinking. Therefore, it is important to analyze critically the notion of link-and-match education in the form of vocationalization of education in the Indonesian context, mainly because it appears to perpetuate the existing problems, and even raise more problems.
This chapter aims to expand the discussion of vocationalization of education underpinned by the link-and-match paradigm, specifically its potential dangers for students’ future. Two forms of vocationalization of education are analyzed in this chapter in order to reveal what the problems are, how such problems disadvan- tage students, and what possible alternatives to overcome the problems are. Critical analysis is employed, that is Critical Curriculum Studies analysis which considers curriculum as always related to power, politics, and human interests. In analyzing Indonesian educational policy documents as the object of analysis, the current chapter demonstrates how the curriculum has never been a neutral site; on the contrary, it is a battlefield of various interests and ideologies. Within this understanding, curriculum produces and reproduces knowledge that may maintain certain advantages or disad- vantages for students. In other words, the curriculum could perpetuate inequity, oppression, discrimination, and injustice; but it could also empower the students and change society to be more democratic and socially just (for more discussion see Apple, 2004; Au, 2012).
5.2 Vocational School in Indonesia: Technicizing
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According to the purposes of vocational education above, it can be seen that the emphasis of its curriculum and learning practices are more technical than theoretical as a means to train the students to become skilled workers in the world of work.
In the Indonesian context, vocational education takes several forms and levels, (1) vocational high school and Islamic vocational school (Madrasah Aliyah Kejuruan;
see also Isbah & Sakhiyya, this volume) at the upper secondary level (3 years), (2) vocational higher education or polytechnic, community colleges, etc. (1–4 years to get Diploma certificate) at tertiary level, and (3) non-formal and informal educa- tion, specifically, Community Learning Centre (Pusat Kegiatan Belajar Masyarakat) and Vocational Learning Centre (Balai Latihan Kerja) (TVET Country Profile:
Indonesia, 2020). This chapter mainly focuses on vocational high schools, which were considered more problematic compared to other types of vocational education in Indonesia.
Vocational schools in Indonesia have a long history and have gotten significant attention from the New Order government (Suharto era). During this time, the educa- tion sector had been perceived as able to overcome problems of unemployment and poverty as well as the engine to boost economic growth (Ricklefs, 2005, pp. 593–
605). One of the most important decisions was when the Minister of Education and Culture, Wardiman Djojonegoro introduced link-and-match as the main educa- tional paradigm (Asnan, 2018; Khurniawan & Haryani, 2015). Various policies for vocational schools have been issued during the New Order era, specifically, the dual-system program that involved students in certain internship programs outside of the school. This program aimed to equip students with real work experience in the real work setting. This program showed the emphasis of vocational school on practical skills for occupational purposes, and it lasts until now with several minor modifications (Haryana, 1995).
In 2005, the Indonesian government issued a policy that shifted the proportion of the number of vocational schools and senior high schools from 30:70 to 70:30 to increase the number of ready-made workers for the labor market. In order to boost local economic growth, the government also developed local-based excellence voca- tional schools. Some examples include the wood carving vocational school in Jepara, a town best known for its wood carving, fishing vocational school in Semarang, the maritime vocational school in Tarakan, and the farming vocational school in Magelang (Mengangkat Potensi Lokal, 2017; Nurtanto & Ramdani, 2016).
Moreover, within the spirit of meeting the twenty-first-century challenges and the international labor market, the government strengthened vocational schools through the revitalization of vocational school programs. “Teaching factory,” a program providing hands-on manufacturing experience at schools, has become the main strategy to revitalize vocational school programs to make the students more involved in a job-setting learning experience. Through the “teaching factory” program, voca- tional schools establish manufacturing units within the school’s learning environment like a real factory or company that produces and sells products. Through this program, students experience real tasks and situations that improve their competencies to be skilled workers in the industrial world. Unlike the dual-system program where the
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learning practices are carried out in real companies outside the school environment, the teaching factory is a school-based program (Kamdi, 2017; Khurniawan et al., 2016; Pemerintah Republik Indonesia, 2016).
After explaining key policy changes in Indonesian vocational schools above, this chapter now moves to an analysis of two main problems in this vocational curriculum and policies as follows.
5.2.1 Problem 1: Vocational School Curriculum
The structure of the vocational school curriculum heavily emphasized technical skills because the government treated vocational schools as suppliers for the job market, especially in the industrial world. These market-driven and link-and-match notions of the vocational school curriculum can be seen in the existing curriculum policy.
For example, the new standards of the national school curriculum were issued by the government in 2018 as the revised version of the previous standards on the national curriculum of 2013. These new standards contain three main points, namely (1) the national standards for vocational schools and Islamic vocational schools, (2) its core and basic competencies, and (3) its curriculum structure. These policies sought to meet market demands on the aforementioned personal and social competencies as parts of the graduates’ standard competencies. It is clearly stated that (1) students should have abilities to work in groups effectively, politely, and productively in carrying out their job and (2) have a good work ethic according to their profession (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah, 2018a, 2018b; Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2018).
Another important point is that several international discourses on education have also influenced such direction and emphasis of vocational school policies in Indonesia. In this case, the revitalization of vocational school programs initiated in 2016 confirmed the importance of the so-called twenty-first century skills for voca- tional school students (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah, 2018a, 2018b). The dominant discourse of these twenty-first-century skills came from the collaborative work of the Partnership for twenty-first-Century Skills, an organiza- tion founded in 2002 in the USA with the main mission to prepare young people to succeed as individuals, citizens, and workers in the twenty-first-century. More specifically, these twenty-first-century skills are learning and innovation skills, life and career skills, information, media, and technology skills, accompanied by key subjects and twenty-first-century themes (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). In the same vein, world organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) encouraged a discourse of ‘productivity’
in the vocational school’s policy direction in Indonesia. For example, at vocational schools in Indonesia, there are courses/subjects that were appeared to be designed following World Bank’s “skill for productivity” discourse (Middleton et al., 2003) and from OECD’s “work-based learning productivity” discourse (Kis, 2016; Sujadi et al., 2017).
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As a result of the revitalization of vocational school programs that attempted to accommodate this spirit of the twenty-first century and the need of the labor market, Indonesian vocational school curriculum emphasizes narrow or limited knowledge and technical skills more than complex and abstract thinking. It can be seen from the grand design of the vocational school curriculum in which the proportion of practical learning is more than its theoretical counterparts at around 60–70% (Arianty &
Purwanto, 2018; Pendidikan Vokasi, 2019). There are several reasons for this orientation. First, the majority of the vocational school students in Indonesia come from lower-income families (Asian Development Bank, 2008, 2013; Vocational and Technical Education in Indonesia, 2012). In order to overcome their economic problems as well as decrease the number of poverties, it is important to equip them with such skills and knowledge needed by the labor market. In this case, technical skills and narrow knowledge offered by the vocational schools are appropriate to meet their needs. Second, vocational students also have negative stigmas that lead the government to only give such technical skills and narrow knowledge. For instance, mischievous, having bad manners, undisciplined, having low social awareness, are slow learners, and having a lack of responsibility and motivation to learn (Dardiri, 2012; Persoalan SMK, 2018). Consequently, they are perceived as having only low levels of ability to learn complex and abstract thinking, hence technical skills and narrow knowledge are perceived as more appropriate for them.
Unfortunately, in practice, vocational school students also face limited opportu- nities to learn complex and abstract thinking, including twenty-first-century skills, particularly higher order thinking skills. This happens not only because the offi- cial vocational school curriculum emphasized more on technical skills and narrow knowledge, but also the learning climate, student academic achievement, and teacher competency. In this case, one of the vocational schoolteachers that I interviewed supports the argument of this chapter stating that teachers in his school tend to teach technical skills because they are required to follow the syllabus derived from the offi- cial vocational school curriculum that emphasizes more on technical skills. Moreover, he added that teaching higher order thinking skills is more difficult because students have only a low level of literacy skills and not all teachers have a good understanding of twenty-first-century skills and other approaches introduced by the government through the revitalization of vocational school programs. They need more time to read and understand the policies before trying to translate them into their learning practices in the classrooms. His confession supports similar information from the news media related to the vocational schoolteachers’ low competencies (see for example Kualitas Guru Rendah, 2017; Kualitas Guru SMA dan SMK, 2016).
Theoretically speaking, the grand design of the vocational school curriculum in Indonesia does not contain what is called by social realists “powerful knowledge.”
In this regard, powerful knowledge contains essential knowledge that equips the students with complex and abstract thinking ability to think beyond their daily expe- riences. Powerful knowledge can be found in any subjects taught at school as the result of the scientific process within epistemic communities, and it is claimed that it will empower the students to make better decisions and become action-competent in
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a way that will positively influence their lives (Barret & Rata, 2014; Gericke et al., 2018). Despite the debate among scholars who agree and disagree with the idea and term of powerful knowledge (see for example White, 2018, 2019), it is important to note that students should have access to knowledge and skills through which they can empower themselves. Unfortunately, the grand design of the current vocational school curriculum in Indonesia is still far from this ideal form. Consequently, it will lead the curriculum to perpetuate inequity and reproduce social inequalities, because they have less access to powerful knowledge than their senior high school students’
counterparts. Furthermore, they will have a low ability to succeed at higher levels of education, they will only get technical job positions with low salaries, and they will also be more likely to have a low ability and chance to empower themselves.
5.2.2 Problem 2: Vocational School Policies
The Indonesian government proposed a shift in the proportion between vocational schools and senior high schools to 70:30 as a strategy to produce more skilled workers and overcomes the problem of poverty among low-income families in Indonesia. This strategic plan has been released by the Department of National Education stating that this shift was planned to be achieved between 2020 and 2025 (Departemen Pendidikan Nasional, 2005). However, until the 2020–2021 academic year the government cannot meet this goal. According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Education and Culture, it is considered that the number of voca- tional schools was not considerably different compared to the number of senior high school. In detail, the number of vocational schools is 14,078 consisting of 3,629 public schools and 10,449 private schools, while the number of senior high schools is 13,865 consisting of 6,899 public schools and 6,966 private schools. Thus, according to this data, the number of vocational schools is only slightly over the number of senior high schools. In other words, it is still far from the 70:30 proportion goal. In general, such a comparison also shows that the quality of vocational schools is also lower than the quality of senior high schools. For example, the number of repeaters in vocational schools is 16,431 students compared to the repeaters in senior high school students at 10,455 students (Pusat Data dan Teknologi Informasi, 2021a, 2021b).
Despite the poverty-eliminating reasons behind the plan to increase the number of vocational schools over the number of senior high schools at 70:30 and its low academic achievements toward the higher ones, the plan for the increasing number of vocational schools could be risky; especially when the curriculum and learning practices that happen in the vocational schools cannot equip the students with appro- priate knowledge and skills for their further economic survival. In this case, when we look at the high amount of unemployment among vocational school graduates (Februari, 2020: Tingkat Pengangguran Terbuka, 2020) and the low quality of voca- tional schools in general (see for example Kualitas Guru Rendah, 2017; Kualitas Guru SMA Dan SMK, 2016; Kurikulum SMK Belum Sesuai, 2017; Mukhlason et al., 2020), this shift in proportion in such a short time might bring more risks than
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advantages. The more vocational schools being built without improvement in quality, the more vocational school graduates with low competencies will be produced. In other words, this policy could be dangerous because it will lead vocational schools to produce more employees that are not needed by or irrelevant to the industrial world and cannot cope with the fast-changing of twenty-first century challenges and opportunities.
Moreover, many Indonesian vocational schools still have traditional programs that do not match the current trend of skills needed by the industrial world and new learning approaches influenced by the fast-changing of the industrial revolution 4.0. For example, the Head of the West Java Provincial Education Office stated that there are 12 study programs at vocational schools considered saturated or no longer needed by the world of work, including office administration, motorcycle engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, nursing, pharmacy, hotel accommodation, etc. One of the causes of the saturation of these study programs is the increasing number of higher education graduates who are willing to work in these positions (Jurusan SMK Mulai Jenuh, 2018; Moratorium SMK Untuk Jurusan Sudah Jenuh, 2017). One of the possible explanations why such traditional study programs still exist at vocational schools might be related to the existing programs at higher education counterparts that produce vocational teachers and the existing teachers that teach at those study programs. In other words, closing such study programs at vocational schools will also close the same study program at higher education, and the ramifications are complex as they related to the bureaucratic management of higher education and the Ministry of Education as well as the teacher’s livelihood and career path. Additionally, new ways of learning through the Internet also possibly cause the saturation of labors in jobs related to such study programs at the vocational schools. It is because many people could access educational and training services in these areas easily through the Internet.
In this section I have discussed how vocational school curriculum as well as its policies might disadvantage students, trapping them in an educational service that provides them with knowledge and skills that do not meet job market demands and cannot be used to economically empower themselves in the fast-changing twenty-first century.