Focus on skills training

SHAH ALAM: Skills certificate courses will be introduced at secondary schools with integrated programmes while two special education vocational secondary schools will be built in Kedah and Pahang.
The two measures are aimed at benefiting special needs students who are not academicaly oriented.
In announcing this yesterday, Education Ministry parliamentary secretary P. Komala Devi said the skills certificate courses would be introduced as a pilot project scheduled to take off by the year-end involving six schools.
Each school will offer one of six vocational subjects for students to take up in Forms Four and Five.
“At the end of Form Five, these students will leave school with a skills certificate issued by the Vocational and Skills Training Council, which comes under the purview of the Human Resources Ministry,” said Komala at the launch of the Heart to Heart campaign at Sekolah Menengah Pendidikan Khas Vokasional (SMPKV) in Section 17, Shah Alam.
If the project is successful, it will benefit a larger number of vocationally inclined special needs students.
The campaign is the first of several initiatives to be introduced in conjunction with the launch of October as Special Education Month in line with the National Education Blueprint 2006-2010.
Komala said of the country’s five million primary and secondary students, 27,000 comprised special needs students. Of this number, 23,000 are students with learning disabilities who attend the special education integrated programme offered at normal schools.

Source: Star Online, 2nd October 2007