Indonesia to boost vocational training for the young

Better training: Official data from Statistics Indonesia showed that graduates from vocational schools form 8.63% of the unemployed in Indonesia. — The Straits Times/Asia News Network

JAKARTA: Indonesia needs to buy more bench vixes and lathe machines while providing better training for its vocational trainers, as the country seeks to gear up the skills of its young army of workers.

South-East Asia’s biggest economy churns out more than one million graduates annually from around 14,000 vocational schools, but they form the largest group of the unemployed due to poor training caused by a curriculum that doesn’t meet industry needs, a lack of equipment and machines, and poorly trained teachers, say industry experts.