With the aim of improving the education quality of Forestry Vocational Schools (SMK Kehutanan), the Center of Forestry Education and Training (CFET) of the Ministry of Forestry (MoFor) in collaboration with FORCLIME conducted a training on “enhancing the capacities of auditor candidates to conduct competency tests for SMKK”. The event took place at the CFET premises in Bogor from June 30 to July 5, 2014. The objective of the training was to provide the candidates with the ability to carry out “competency tests” for students who will have to complete the national examination on forestry vocational practices. In the Indonesian education system, forestry vocational students have to pass this examination, which also includes knowledge application in practice, to show their competencies in forestry.

The training was facilitated by senor lecturers from CFET and attended by 60 participants, such as forestry vocational teachers, lecturers of CFET and other forestry training centers. During the opening, a representative from FORCLIME, Mathias Bertram, explained that the MoFor has already recruited several SMKK graduates to work at Forest Management Units (FMUs) and, as over or the next five years the MoFor is planning to establish 600 FMUs, the demand for skilled human resources will be large. Graduated SMKK students, with intermediate-level technical skills, will therefore play an important role in supporting the FMU activities in the future. He also emphasized important issues in managing an FMU that need to be considered for curriculum development, including: (1) there are still tenure conflicts within FMU areas that require solutions; (2) parts of forest boundary demarcation still unclear; (3) need to develop entrepreneurship in the forestry sector; (4) still lacking focus on rehabilitation and conservation areas; and (5) strengthening of FMU institutions. Mathias Bertram put forward that lessons learnt from the FMU development process in Germany as well as other practical experiences from the field should be more emphasized in SMKK teaching than mere theory.

For more information, please contact:
Edy Marbyanto, Strategic Area Manager Human Capacity Development