Learning to love lifelong learning

IT’S a national call to every citizen. Old or young, male or female, urbanites or rural folk, everyone has a chance to learn under the National Training Week (NTW) 2023 initiative – and there’s no payment required.

It seems you could learn everything from high-tech subjects like web design and digital marketing to childcare, elder care, baking, and even automotive skills and air-conditioning repair.

The NTW plans on offering a whopping 5,000 courses, in fact. And much like the Menu Rahmah initiative, the government plans on working with the private sector to keep everything free: the programme will work with organisations or individuals working on an opt-in or voluntary basis.

Partners and collaborators will also offer logistics support and provide training venues – and interestingly, the plan is to make the training as diverse as the range of courses because there will be remote learning, physical classes, hybrid learning, and self-paced elearning on offer.

Obviously, the government wants to reach as many people as possible with this flexibility, which is especially crucial for those who face constraints in attending physical classes.

At the press conference to announce this initiative, there was also talk of addressing the worrying skills mismatch in the country that has graduates working in semi-skilled and low-skilled occupations instead of in what they spent time and money studying for.

Mind you, we don’t think taking one of these courses will turn you into an expert overnight.

If we’re following similar programmes in countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Singapore and the United States, what Malaysia’s NTW will do is open doors.

Imagine you’re a science graduate who has always been interested in baking – well, take a cupcake-making course and see how it goes.

Perhaps you’re contemplating learning a new skill that would require an investment of time and money – take a free course and see if you want to commit.

This is an interesting idea that we think will offer something more than new skills – there is a chance here for Malaysians to get into the habit of lifelong learning.

In a world where there’s a new technology around every corner, and work processes are regularly disrupted, we need to be flexible enough to keep learning and developing if we don’t want to lose our competitive edge.

But you know that saying, “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”? Well, the government can offer all sorts of reskilling and upskilling opportunities but they will all come to naught if we don’t take advantage of them.

So fellow Malaysians, are you ready to learn something new when the NTW kicks off from May 22 to 28?