Vocational Schools Urged to Prepare Students for Global Careers from Year 10

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (Kemendikdasmen) has detailed a series of steps that educational units and vocational high school (SMK) students can take to pursue global careers. Director of SMK at Kemendikdasmen, Arie Wibowo Khurniawan, stated that SMK students wishing to work abroad must identify their skills and target countries from Year 10 to ensure thorough preparation. “This is not a sudden activity, but a process that must be prepared by every SMK that genuinely intends and commits to entering the global market. The preparation should not be in the final year, nor a few months before graduation, but must start from Year 10, from the new student admissions process (SPMB),” Arie said during a webinar titled ‘SMK Berani Mendunia: Working Abroad Legally, Safely, and with Dignity’ in Jakarta on Friday. In Year 10, he continued, schools must strengthen the foundation of students’ global talents, starting with character education, work discipline, and introducing basic foreign languages of several destination countries. Additionally, Arie noted that students must also bolster their digital and technological literacy, as well as their insight into global careers and international culture. In Year 11, educational units should enhance the industrial competencies of SMK students by providing industry-based learning, teaching factories, project-based learning, intermediate-level foreign language reinforcement, and preparation for competency certification. Entering Year 12, Arie explained that educational units must prepare SMK students with various certifications, ranging from competency and foreign language certifications to the preparation of various documents required for a global career. At this stage, he said, educational units must also assist SMK students in participating in industrial internship recruitment and job matching in the following year. “Then in Year 13, we now have an additional one-year programme making SMK 3+1, for maturation, reaching sufficient age, and preparing legal documents so that when they turn 18, they can be ready to be dispatched directly to the destination country,” Arie concluded.