TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Education and Culture Ministry Vocational High schools (SMK)Director M. Bakrun said some 2,000 SMKs will be closed due to its poor quality. He said there are 14,000 institutions and 5 million students.

“We will lower the number of low-quality vocational schools that has a small number of students,” said Bakrun during his opening speech in the student competition in Jogja Expo Center (JEC), Bantul, Yogyakarta, Tuesday, July 9.

He added that schools that will be closed are those that have under 60 students considering the difficulties in the education management, and there are 2,000 schools such those across the country.

“We set a target to lower the number of schools, but increase the number of students. We estimate to drop the school number to 12,000,” he said.

Nevertheless, the ministry is determined to boost the number of vocational high students. “Hopefully, there will be 6 million students in the next five years,” Bakrun said.

Additionally, the ministry constantly encourages cooperations with regional administrations to optimize the students’ capability since SMK have high opportunities to develop the potential of each region.

Bakrun went on to mention there are already a number of vocational schools developed based on the region’s potential. For example, a school of coffee in West Java, school of mangroves in South Sulawesi, and school of palm oil in Riau.

MUH. SYAIFULLAH