Skills institutes to go into double shift mode in July

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PUTRAJAYA: Higher national youth skills institutes (IKTBNs) and national youth skills institutes (IKBNs) will maximise their training capacity through double shift in the pursuit of enrolling up to 15,000 students by 2015.

Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the programme would entail adding more learning sessions starting July at IKTBNs and IKBNs nationwide with gradual increase in the number of students enrolled with each new intake.

He said this was in line with the Prime Minister Seri Najib Tun Razak’s wish of empowering the institutes to produce more skilled youths by fine-tuning their courses and modules to ensure the employability rate of 90 per cent.

“These efforts could help improve the starting salaries of IKBN and IKBN diploma and certificate holders by 10 per cent.

“At the same time, the institutes will forge closer ties with the industries,” he said when opening the 10th IKBN convocation at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) here yesterday.

A total of 4,678 IKBN students received their certificates and diplomas at the two-day convocation.

Khairy said IKBN diploma and certificate holders were equipped with skills required by employers who would not have to retrain them.

He said the education system in developed countries such as Germany, South Korea and Japan gave emphasis to technical and vocational education in producing skilled workers.

Present were ministry secretary-general Datuk Jamil Salleh and director-general of skills development Saari Salleh. — Bernama