Global Lifelong Learning Summit Singapore Reveals Three Keys to Success of the Pre-Employment Card Program

Jakarta, InfoPublik - There are three important key points to the success of the Pre-Employment Card Program, from the design process to program implementation, over the last two years.

Firstly, designing a program that addresses problems and needs related to money, information, and time. Secondly, developing an ecosystem of various stakeholders to implement the program design. Thirdly, is doing continuous iteration because no program is perfect at the beginning.

“The Pre-Employment Card Program strives to continuously improve its quality based on data and input from its users to meet the needs of users in a targeted manner,” said Executive Director of Pre-Employment Card Program Management Denni Puspa Purbasari. She is one of the speakers at the Global Lifelong Learning Summit forum in Singapore on Thursday (11/3).

The forum with the theme "Maximizing the Socio-Economic Impact of Lifelong Learning" was organized by the Singapore Ministry of Education, Skillsfuture Singapore, and Singapore's Institute of Adult Education. It is in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), Asia-Europe Meeting Lifelong Learning Hub, International Labor Organization, and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Pre-Employment Card Program had the honor of appearing in a discussion session with the topic "Global Experiences in Lifelong Learning Policy Development and Implementation" with the main presentation by David Atchoarena, Director of UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning.

On that occasion, Denni Purbasari shared a presentation entitled "Pre-Employment Card Program: Indonesia's Large Scale Skill Development Program, From Design to Policy-Making to Implementation."

In addition to the Pre-Employment Card Program, two other speakers shared perspectives in the discussion session, namely a Professor of Global Education Policy in the School of Education at the University at Albany, Aaron Benavot, and the President of the Republic of Korea's National Institute for Lifelong Education, Dae Joong Kang.

The Global Lifelong Learning Summit aims to facilitate discussion of various good practices, approaches, and collaboration opportunities that can collectively promote lifelong learning to support inclusive economic growth.

This series of discussions involved various actors, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, business entities, and other stakeholders. The Pre-Employment Card Program was seen as an attractive approach to organizing lifelong learning.

Denni explained the challenges of the Pre-Employment Card as a large-scale program that intersects with information dissemination and communication to make the community understand the program's objectives well and reach all levels of society.

"In addition, the Pre-Employment Card Program must manage public expectations while maximizing the involvement of all parties so that no one is left behind," she said.

As an archipelagic country with 17 thousand islands and a population of 250 million, Indonesia has an extraordinary geographical bonus. However, its workforce productivity is very low. The gap between the skills possessed by the labor force and those needed by the market is huge. However, companies and individuals are still facing a low level of awareness about investing in skills upgrading.

“The 2019 BPS survey noted that 90 percent of the Indonesian workforce or around 120 million people have never attended training or courses outside of school. What does it mean? Market fail. Therefore, the government must step in,” said Denni.

The program was born from President Joko Widodo's directive in 2019. The goal is to increase the Indonesian workforce's productivity, competence, competitiveness, and entrepreneurship. The priority of the Pre-Employment Card Program is to reduce the skill gap in the workforce so that they can adapt to changes, have decent jobs, and have better incomes.

A participant in the discussion, Shalini, asked about the impact of the Pre-Employment Card Program on the participants' work and how they got a job after joining the program.

Denni conveyed the mechanism: before starting the training in the Pre-Employment Card Program, participants went through a data collection process regarding the conditions and status of work at that time. In the initial assessment, 40 percent of the participants of the Pre-Employment Card Program had never been hired for a job. After attending the training, 33 percent of them were successfully employed.

"The main mission of the Pre-Employment Card Program is to help the workforce gain additional skills through fun training methods," he explained.

At the end of the session, Denni Purbasari encourages collaboration spirit and invites conference participants to start small. "Keep experimenting and perfecting these experiments into a lifelong learning program that is good for the community," she concluded.

Photo: Istimewa/Pre-Employment Card Program Doc

Author: Baheramsyah

Editor: Untung S

Translator: Wilda Stiana