ASEAN-United Kingdom TVET partnerships for sustainable futures

Description

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has gained importance in the partnership between the United Kingdom and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in recent years. The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization has identified TVET as one of the seven priority areas for educational development from 2015 to 2035 and emphasised TVET’s contribution to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4. The establishment of the ASEAN TVET Council in 2020 and its work plan for 2021 to 2030 have further underlined the importance of TVET in the region.
TVET has been part of the UK government’s international assistance programmes for low- and middle-income countries. However, UK-ASEAN TVET partnerships in the past decade can also be subsumed under the ‘education export’ model in line with the UK International Education Strategy.