He said this in his ministry’s winding-up speech in the Dewan Rakyat when asked by Nurul Izzah Anwar (PH-Permatang Pauh) to comment on the findings of the Auditor-General’s Report that 40% of courses provided by private TVET institutions are unaccredited.
“The evaluation of TVET courses is done by the private institutions themselves. Then they give us these ‘flowery’ reports that 80% to 90% of their graduates successfully got jobs. The question is whether these reports are credible or not,” Saravanan said.
“This is why the prime minister has proposed that the human resources ministry be made the single channel to supervise the TVET programmes. We will also prepare an independent report so that this problem of unaccredited TVET courses can be resolved.”
Nurul Izzah, in response to Saravanan’s comments, urged other ministries that supervise the TVET programmes to have the “political will” to hold private and government educational institutions accountable if they are found to be providing unaccredited courses.
The Auditor-General’s Report 2019 Series 2 released in September revealed that the TVET programmes had yet to reach the targets set under the 11th Malaysia Plan.
The report also found that evaluations on the effectiveness of TVET as a whole were not implemented, apart from the weaknesses in the management of the programme in terms of its delivery and accreditation, accreditation certification, assessment on the competencies of teaching staff; and management of student financing.
“Among the weaknesses that need to be noted were the total intake of TVET students between 2016 and 2020 which showed a downward trend between 1% and 24.6%. Students enrolment in 2016 was 139,699 compared to only 99,589 students in 2020,” the report said.
In addition, the TVET programmes only managed to produce 474,672 (52.8%) graduates from 2016 to 2020 compared with the 900,000 new job opportunity targets set for 2020.
The report suggested creating a single accreditation centre for all programmes offered to ensure TVET graduates are recognised by the public and private sectors to meet the country’s industrial needs.