Education must focus on workforce: experts

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Education must focus on workforce: experts
By WATCHIRANONT THONGTEP
The Nation 2011-09-16

The government has been urged to promote linkages between the education and private sectors to enable development of human capital before the creation of the Asean Economic Community in 2015.

"The labour market lacks skilled workers, especially from vocational schools, while the economy has been gradually expanding," said Yongyuth Chalamwong, director of the labour development research department of the Thailand Devel-opment Re-search Institute.

One of the problems was that about 130,000 students drop out of high school, of whom 20,000 are from vocational colleges, he said during the "Re-invent Thailand" roundtable organised by Krungthep Tura-kij newspaper in cooperation with IBM Solution De-livery, the Stock Exchange of Thailand and Thai Listed Companies Association.

The government should add this urgent issue to the national human resource development plan. There should be quality guarantees at all education levels from national to Asean qualification frameworks. Vocational teachers should be trained to produce skilled workers for industry.

To prepare the workforce for the Asean common market, schools and colleges should teach major foreign languages besides English, he added.

Phanit Laosirirat, executive director of the Thailand Produc-tivity Institute, said the government should set an example for good governance while financially assisting educational institutions to create courses with the private sector in order to fill that gap.

The service sector, including tourism, financial, retail and medical services, was also important for the country, as half of its employees were skilled workers, he added.

Pensri Suteerasarn, president of the Thai Listed Companies Association, and Bunchai Pun-turaumporn, chief executive officer of Sabina, said they want to see the integration of highly experienced personnel and educational institutions.

For example, executives should be allowed to share their experiences and soft skills with vocational students as a shortcut to increasing labour productivity.

Suras Lertpoompunya, general manager of IBM Solution Delivery, said the use of free-form information and communications technology was crucial for encouraging |all levels of employees to share |their experiences as well as to reduce operating costs amid soaring production and labour factor costs.

Veerathai Santiprabhop, executive vice president and chief strate

gic officer, said he was somewhat concerned about the government's populist policies that could bring the employment situation down.

For example, Veerathai said, to raise the minimum daily wage to Bt300 and hike the monthly salary to B15,000 for university graduates was just a populist policy that would be good for a short period of time but not targeted at improving labour productivity.

This would also distort the market mechanism and cause problems for the economy in the long term.