SEAMEO TED has established a SEA Vocational-Technical High School network and fully endorsed in the 3rd GB Meeting in October 8-9, 2020. The establishment of this network is to enable all members from technical-vocational high school in Southeast Asia to make partnership share give inputs, feedback and suggestions for mutual benefit and in order to promote the quality and relevant of technical education at secondary level in the areas of Mechanics/Electronics and Manufacturing, Agriculture/Fisheries/Animal Science, Computer Science/IT/ Informatics and Hospitality and Tourism. On December 16, 2020, at 10.00 am (China Time). SEAMEO TED organized an online orientation meeting to seek possibilities of cooperative activity implementation for SEA Vocational-Technical High School Network and China. The network orientation meeting was attended by approximately 58 participating members from Indonesia (20 schools); Malaysia (8 schools); Myanmar (1 school); the Philippines (15 schools); Singapore (1 school); and Cambodia (12 schools). The online
orientation meeting was attended and led by the delegates from SEAMEO
Secretariat (Dr. Wahyudi, Deputy Director), Go Study Global Education (Ms. QIN Ziyan aka Ms Echo, Director of International Relations) and her colleagues also participated in this important meeting. The majors are Mechanics/Electronics and Manufacturing (31 schools); Agriculture/Fisheries/Animal Science (21 schools); Computer
Science/IT/Informatics (30 schools); Hospitality and Tourism (9 schools); and
Automobile (8 schools). As a result of the discussion, some key suggestions
from the participants are:
- There should be five categories for each trades because
we have five trades such as (1) Mechanics/Electronics and Manufacturing(2)Agriculture/Fisheries/Animal Science (3) Computer Science/IT/Informatics (4)Hospitality and Tourism (5) Automobile. This grouping will be used for What’s App Group formulation; - The Webinar for each group of each trade should be
organized to learn and share best practices among the network members; - Each school will send their school information to
SEAMEO TED to make a school information profile, which will be published on the website of SEAMEO TED and website of SEA Vocational-Technical High School Network; - SEAMEO TED and potential strategic partner Go Study Global Education China will support and coordinate the regional cooperative activity implementation;
- Each school should strengthen cooperation by signing MoU with each other;
- Grant proposal for a research, training program, workshops/forum or conference should be written to ask for financial supports from advanced countries or NGOs;
- ICT and Industry 4.0 skills should be considered for
teachers’ professional development programs; - Because of the pandemic disruption, a virtual school
visit should be conducted monthly among the network members to learn and share school activity.
The meeting also agreed on future action plan to collaboratively act to
together as the following:
- Upcoming webinar for each trade to learn and share best practices from schools. It was suggested SEAMEO TED shall plan to arrange a webinar series in January-February 2021;
- Specific action plans will be formulated and distributed to all the participants;
- MoU signing between schools and schools, online-offline training programs for teachers and school principals in China, study visits to China, research studies, and conferences/workshops will be arranged.