Evaluating Competentiveness of Indonesia Agricultural Vocational Schools

This paper examines the competentiveness of Indonesia agricultural vocational schools using comprehensive Competence-Based Education (CBE) Framework. Competentiveness refers to what extent competence-based education implemented in a study programme. CBE is recently gaining more attention from policymakers and researchers in vocational education worldwide. To explain of what CBE entail and should look alike, Dutch researchers developed a comprehensive CBE model consisted of ten CBE principles and five levels implementation. This model promised a useful framework for systematic evaluation of CBE implementation. In this present study, we used the model to gain insight into the extent CBE is taking place in Indonesia agricultural education. Data were collected through the means of school principals’ school self-assessment and from cross-sectional survey using teachers and students’ perceived CBE questionnaire. 453 teachers and 2219 students from 41 agricultural schools involved in this study. Based on the research results, it can be concluded that competence-based education indeed being implemented in Indonesia agricultural schools. School principals, teachers and students noticed the presents of CBE principles, except for a principle related to the flexibility of a study program. This study also reveals that CBE, which was originally developed in the western context, is applicable to the non-western context, Indonesia.