A student at a polytechnic in Indonesia learns how to design printed circuit boards. Photo credit: Asian Development Bank.
Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) practitioners will gather in Kuching, Sarawak this month to talk about how TVET can help advance sustainable socio-economic development in the BIMP-EAGA subregion.
The 4th BIMP-EAGA TVET Conference will be held in Kuching, Sarawak on 11 to 12 December. It is jointly organized by BIMP-EAGA, Sarawak state’s Ministry of Education, Innovation and Talent Development (MEITD), and Sarawak Skills, a training and education provider supported by the state government. The last conference, which was held in March 2023, was also hosted by Kuching.
Discussions at the 2-day conference will revolve around the following topics:
- Advancing skills development for the future of work,
- Transformation of the TVET ecosystem,
- Partnerships between industry and TVET institutions, and
- BIMP-EAGA and the transformation of TVET.
Sarawak Premier Abang Johari Openg will deliver the keynote address.
The BIMP-EAGA TVET conference serves as a platform for developing institutional partnerships and networks, which will help ensure that the skills developed meet the needs of industries and support the sustainable development of the subregion. The conference seeks to guide efforts to produce knowledge products and services, such as training and research. Partnerships between the academe and industry will help ensure students can easily find jobs once they graduate.
At the 15th BIMP-EAGA Summit in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia in 2023, BIMP-EAGA leaders reiterated the need to prepare workers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and jobs of the future.
4IR refers to a range of new technologies that fuse the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It includes Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and cognitive computing. These technologies are changing how industries, countries, and governments operate and the way people live.
BIMP-EAGA has several internationally recognized TVET and higher education institutions, including research-oriented universities. One of the strategic priorities of the subregion is to strengthen partnerships between these institutions to improve competencies and share innovation and technology.
The midterm review of BIMP-EAGA Vision 2025 noted that all four member countries—Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—have made progress in TVET, exceeding the subregion’s outcome target of 70% competency certification rate. There have been 20 partnerships with TVET and higher education institutions forged, which is just four partnerships short of the target for 2025. The midterm review was conducted between 2021 and 2022.