Southeast Asia is a region of Asia with distinctive feature of cultural diversity from the ten independent countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam. The countries reach from eastern India to China and are generally divided into ‘mainland’ and ‘island’ zones. Virtually all of Southeast Asia lies between the tropics, and so there are similarities in climate as well as natural resources, and tourists’ attraction throughout the region, while there is also significant diversity in culture, language, and religion.
In relation to ASEAN Economic Community 2015, where all ASEAN nations will relatively have mobility in term of labors, products, services, and investments through the agreement, the ten countries in Southeast Asia will have to pay more attention in preparing the education development especially in improving the quality and relevance of graduates to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive world of work. Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) would be the best areas to be explored for cooperation within the countries as it provides skills acquisition.
Skill is considered to be very vital to the growth of developing country’s economy, especially in this era of technological integration. It would be needed by many life sectors, not only in a modern environment, but also in agricultural and other informal sectors. It is through technical vocational education and training a more relevant graduate could be produced to meet the evolving needs of industry or employer.
TVET has been identified as a priority area in the South East Asian region. This development resulted from consultations held in 2012, initiated by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) under the SEAMEO College Project. After two years, SEAMEO affirmed the importance of TVET by naming it as one of its post-2015 priority areas during the Strategic Dialogue of Education Ministers in September 2014.
As a form of education that results in poverty reduction, economic recovery and sustainable development, TVET has received greater attention from policy makers, particularly in the quest for economic integration into ASEAN at the year-end of 2015. With this context in mind, and considering the perceived increase in mobility of skilled workers in the region, SEAMEO in cooperation with other institutions, i.e: Ministries of Education of SEA countries, SEAMEO Centres, NGOs, etc. have been conducting several programmes related to the SEA TVET development within the region.