The Management Training and Development Programme Requirements of TVET School Administrators of Brunei Darussalam

Introduction

The rebranding and change plan of Institute of Brunei Technical Education includes the management team’s professional development and continuing education in one of its array of key strategic objectives. To complement the strategy, this paper aimed to take an inquiry on the legitimate and appropriate management training requirements of TVET school administrators by introducing five management areas as initial training courses. This study applied the descriptive method using a structured, Likert-scaled questionnaire whereby, in one captive setting during a rebranding retreat, 93.54 per cent of TVET administrators were asked to rate training constructs according to the construct’s importance to their role as administrators, their perceived level of competence, and the perceived existence of personnel deemed competent in the five management areas. The five management areas which are marketing research, organizational behavior, quality assurance and management, supervisory leadership, and training and development were found by the TVET school administrators as very important. The administrators claimed however that they are just quite competent due to their inadequate exposure and actual practice, their desire to be updated with contemporary approaches, and the limited number of administrators who are really competent with sufficient exposure on the five areas. Competence in the five management areas is essential not only in the institution’s transformation phase but also in reinforcing the administrators’ skills in bracing for internal and external challenges of organizational operation brought about by client demands, the international harmonization of TVET progammes, and the pouring in of innovative and contemporary practices.

The Department of Technical Education (DTE) of the Ministry of Education of Brunei Darussalam is currently under transformation. In a general sense, DTE is into “rebranding” its image that includes crafting new visions and goals, revitalizing its organizational structure and enhancing the characters of its human resource. The DTE rebranding aims to establish a post-modern corporate look and aspirations from the traditional DTE into a fresh post-secondary, TVET institution. In this intensive transformation process, DTE will acquire a new name which shall be called the Institute of Brunei Technical Education or IBTE. DTE was established under the arms of the Ministry of Education in January 1993. It was originally designed to accommodate GCE ‘O’ Level secondary school leavers and students with minimum of nine years of education. At present, the Institute of Brunei Technical Education (2014) supervises approximately 497 teachers (April 2014) who are nurturing an estimated 3,728 students (July 2014) spread in seven large Vocational-Technical Institutions in the four districts of Brunei Darussalam.

The DTE White Paper Report (2013) enumerates several issues that prompted DTE to undertake transformation or rebranding, to wit:

• 1.

  The existing TVET system is no longer relevant and responsive in a rapidly changing global environment,

• 2.

  The need to strategically align TVET system with the new SPN21 initiative, to match the curriculum and graduates’ qualifications to that of the innovative and diversified economy;

• 3.

  The need to establish an appropriate system of governance with autonomy and flexibility to address inadequate teaching capacity, shortage of teaching staff with industry-related experience, unattractive campus environment, and seeming lack of resource; and

• 4.

  The need to focus on competency-based programmes particularly on life long and employability skills.